Artistic Collective:

click here for 2008 production bios

Velina Brown, Actor/Contributing Lyricist. Velina has been a principal actor for the Mime Troupe in such shows as Social Work, Knocked Up, Escape to Cyberia, Gotta Getta Life, Coast City Confidential, Soul Suckers from Outer Space, Killing Time, Damaged Care, City for Sale, Eating It, 1600 Transylvania Avenue,Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan, Showdown at Crawford Gulch, she was Veronique of the Mounties, and was both an actor and Contributing Lyricist on GodFellas and Making a Killing. She has appeared onstage at A.C.T., Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Word for Word, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, Pacific Jewish Theater, Thick Description and Theatreworks, as well as film, TV, and commercials.

Christian Cagigal, Actor, first SFMT show was Veronique of the Mounties: Operation Frozen Fredom. Christian has worked with such notablecompanies like 42nd Street Moon and Kaliyuga Arts. He’s a graduate from SFSU: Theatre Arts. Christian is also a champion magician, winning awards for both his stage and close-up work as well as winning Best of the SF Fringe 2004 for his show: Magic @ The Fringe-no dancing girls, no camera tricks. He has also ‘magic consulted’ for various theater productions including A.C.T.’s Master and Margarita. Christian was also last seen as Todd in last year’s SFMT show GodFellas.

Ellen Callas, Teacher/Actor/Playwright/Manager, in 1976 co-founded Hit and Run Theater, a political sketch comedy troupe that toured rural northern California for many years. Since joining the Mime Troupe in 1986, she has worked as a writer, production and company manager, actor, director, stage manager, and is a teacher for the company's ongoing Youth Theater Project. Ellen also continues her twenty-five year career as an improvisational theater performer.

Michael Carreiro, Technical Director/Set Designer/Actor, First came to the Mime Troupe in 1998 as a participant in summer workshops for actors. He continued his studies in Commedia and improvisation in Los Angeles, returning to the Mime Troupe in 1999 as technical director for City for Sale. He has performed with the Mime Troupe in City for Sale, Eating It, The Independent Female or A Man Has His Pride, 1600 Transylvania Avenue, and Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan. Michael constructed the sets for all three shows and recently designed the traveling set used during the Berlin tour for 1600 Transylvania Avenue. Michael enjoys acting with other alternative companies including Black Artist Contemporary Cultural Experience and Theater Rhinoceros.

Ed Holmes, Actor, has been performing and teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 29 years including with the Berkeley Mime Troupe, Antenna Theater and fifteen years with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. In addition as a member of Fratelli Bologna, he appeared in THE RIGHT STUFF. He is also know as Bishop Joey of The First Church of The Last Laugh.

Lisa Hori-Garcia, Lisa joined the Mime Troupe in summer 2004 for the production Showdown at Crawford Gulch and was selected for collective membership later that year. She received her BA from Smith College and upon graduation started her first professional theater job with New WORLD Theater in Amherst, Massachusetts. Since moving to San Francisco, Lisa has performed with Asian American Theater Company, the Magic Theater, Woman's Will, Impact Theater and Word for Word, to name a few. Lisa is also a teacher/director with the Mime Troupe's Youth Theater Project.

Will McCandless, Sound Engineer/Designer, is the most recent addition to the San Francisco Mime Troupe artistic collective. Will began with the Troupe in 2006 as the sound engineer for the California tour of Godfellas. Since then, Will has been the Troupe's sound engineer as well as the sound designer for the SFMT Youth Theatre Project. During the off-season, Will designs sound for several Bay Area Theatres. Will has designed sound for the Magic Theatre, Center REP, Marin Theatre Company, Solano College Theatre, A.C.T. Conservatory, Alter Theater, Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, and Custom Made Theatre Company. Will is a recipient of the 2008 Landisman Fellowship. The Landisman Fellowship supports emerging theatre designers and technicians and is a program of Theatre Bay Area.Pat Moran, Musician/Composer, joined the Mime Troupe collective in January 2007. He worked as a musician and composer for the shows Godfellas and Doing Good. Pat can be currently seen performing with Les Croque-Notes (an acoustic quintet specializing in the music of Georges Brassens) and Lord Loves a Workingman (nine piece 1960s style southern soul).

Keiko Shimosato, Actor/Director/Designer joined the Mime Troupe in 1987. Keiko holds a BFA in Theater Arts, MA in Multi-Media from Univ. of Iowa. She came to California with the horse-drawn Caravan Stage Company of Canada. Since 1987, has performed in, designed for, written or directed all but one of the summer shows.

Michael Gene Sullivan, Actor/Writer/Director, joined the Troupe in 1988 as a replacement actor. Began writing for the Troupe in 1992 (Social Work), directed his first SFMT show in 1995 (Coast City Confidential), and became headwriter for the Troupe in 2000. In the last twenty years Michael has performed in, written, and/or directed over twenty Mime Troupe productions, including Offshore (actor/writer), 1600 Transylvania Avenue (writer/director), Mr. Smith Goes To Obscuristan (actor, co-writer, co-director), Showdown at Crawford Gulch (actor/writer), GodFellas (actor/writer), and most recently Making a Killing (actor, writer, co-director)
Other work includes performances with American Conservatory Theater, Denver Center Theatre Company, the Magic, Eureka, and Lorraine Hansberry Theaters, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Theatreworks, and the Berkeley and San Jose Repertory Theaters. Michael is the author of the award winning one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You - You Look Like Huey P. Newton?, which he performed in New York, Vancouver, and San Francisco, and is the author of 1984, the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of George Orwell's dystopic novel. The play, directed by Tim Robbins, opened at the Actor's Gang Theatre in Los Angeles, has been performed in Europe and Asia, and has had several American tours.

Victor Toman, Actor/Choreographer, has been living in the Bay Area since 1988 and has worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, El Teatro de la Esperanza, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The Dance Brigade, and Elbows Akimbo to name few. In other parts of the world, Victor has worked with The Caravan Stage Company, Mixed Blood Theatre, and The Eugene Festival of Musical Theatre.

Office Staff:

Rollin Feld is the Troupe's new General Manager. Raised in the Chicago-land area, rollin brings not only his business acumen, but also his artistic talent to the Troupe. As an artist, Rollin studied sculpting at The Chicago art Institute before moving to the Bay Area, and continuing his studies at The California College of Arts and Crafts, and later the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduation from the Institute he began a design firm, specializing in uniquely sculpted furniture. Living for a time in South East Asia, Rollin's, designs were featured in major showrooms throughout the U.S. While his entrepreneurial spirit led him to start other companies, he also began work in the nonprofit world, where he was program director for the theatre and arts department at a school for disadvantaged youths.Merging his business and artistic talents, for 15 years Rollin was Director of Operations for Skywalker Sound, working as a creator, support for film, and as a coordinator of events. Concurrently, he was working as an independent producer and creative director for a wide range of events and venues. After leaving Skywalker Rollin followed his passion for youth and community development, becoming Operations Director for Youth Media International.

Alumni:

Bruce Barthol, Principal Composer/Lyricist, 1976-2006. Bruce's scores for the Mime Troupe have won Bay Area Critics Circle Awards. He has written for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and ODC San Francisco and was the original bass player with Country Joe and the Fish. Bruce holds an MFA in Musical Theater, N.Y.U.

Dan Chumley, Actor/Teacher/Principal Director, 1967-2003. Dan dropped out of Harvard University in 1967, his junior year to join the San Francisco Mime Troupe, then on tour with an anti-Vietnam war satire. Through the l970's and most of the l980's he acted and directed with the Troupe. From the mid-1980's, he was the company's principal director. In 2001 he took a leave of absence from the SFMT. After 33 years he is making space for whatever comes next. During his tenure, he also served as the company manager and technical director, as well as creator, director, and lead teacher of the SFMT's Youth Theatre and Summer Workshop programs. He has led international collaborations in Israel, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines. He has taught college students at ACT and USF and animators at Disney, Sony, DreamWorks, Lucas and PDI, where he worked on Shreck. Since 2000 he has taught with the Arts in Public Education Initiative at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond California, Oakland Asian/ Pacific Island Cultural Center, and the San Francisco Circus Center. He has been in an extended residency in Asia, at first sponsored by the Asian Cultural Council, but since March of this year he has been working with The Theater of Silence in Hong Kong, on tour with the group in Shanghai and Korea. Working with Mok Chi Yu of the Center for Community Cultural Development he has taught a series of workshops for teens and activists from many NGOs. He has taught two workshops in Manila for the Philippine Educational Theater Association, most recently as a member of the Mekong Project Faculty. In 2006 he worked on a musical comedy on Korean Labor History with the Ilter (workplace) Theater company.

Amos Glick, Actor/Teacher/Director, 1991-2007. became a member of the collective in 1997 and performed in 15 productions with the Troupe. He created and performed The Dick & Dubya Show: A Republican Outreach Cabaret with fellow Trouper Ed Holmes. He has taught Physical Theater and Improvisation workshops all over the country and in Italy and Germany and was an Artist in Residence at The SF School of The Arts in 2006. Other acting credits include roles with The Alternative Theatre Ensemble, SF Shakespeare Festival, Marin Shakespeare Company, The Tenderloin Opera Company and The New Pickle Circus. Amos has been a sketch comedian, clown, puppeteer and improviser with: BATS Improv, True Fiction Magazine, Your New Best Friends, Tonal Chaos, The Management, The Daredevil Chicken Club, Klezmermania, Bread and Puppet and others. He can be seen in the films THE VILLAGE BARBERSHOP, OPAL and AROUND THE FIRE and on television in the TV show NASH BRIDGES. He played guitar and mandolin with Charity Kahn & The Jamband and The Bastard Brothers. Currently he can be seen as a clown in Le Rêve, a water/circus spectacle created by Franco Dragone.

Joan Holden, Principal Playwright, 1967-2000. Holden's first of some 30 plays for the Troupe was "The Independent Female, or a Man Has His Pride," an ironic feminist melodrama that declared the group's allegiance to the "New Left" in the early 1970's. Her 1973 "The Dragon Lady's Revenge," based on the Ramparts magazine exposé of the CIA's complicity in the Indochina heroin trade, won the troupe's second Village Voice OBIE Award, which honors off-Broadway theater. In 1990, the troupe won its third OBIE award with Holden's "Seeing Double," a mistaken-identity farce that dramatized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was performed in both West and East Jerusalem. Many of the plays Holden has written or co-written stand as landmarks of political theater. Holden has enjoyed a parallel career as a translator and adaptor of comedies and has created shows in collaboration with artists in Israel, the Philippines, Nepal, and Hong Kong. She has served on peer panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, has been honored with Bay Area Theater Critics' Circle, Dramalogue, and Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards, and received playwriting grants from the Rockefeller and Gerbode Foundations. She was been awarded the San Francisco Working Women's Festival Working Woman of the Year Award and, with the Mime Troupe, the San Francisco Media Alliance Golden Gadfly Award.

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