Arts Listings

Promising “more song-and-dance than a Bush Administration press conference,” the San Francisco Mime Troupe will be Making a Killing this weekend, for free, at Cedar Rose Park, a block from Cedar and Chestnut Streets. 

The tale that will unfold under the open skies follows two Army newspaper reporters assigned to grind out a puff piece on an Army-funded hospital in Iraq. What they find, when the facts unravel, is “corruption, death, music and mayhem,” as Dick and Condi cook the intelligence back in D.C.—and a military-industrial-cum-Neo-Con cabal block any fact-finding on the ground in Iraq. 

The Mime Troupe is celebrating its 48th summer in the parks with this play by Michael Gene Sullivan (with Jon Brooks), whose adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 has been touring nationally and internationally, staged by film actor Tim Robbins for L.A.’s Actors Gang. There’s a two-and-a-half minute YouTube segment on the Troupe’s website (sfmt.org). Directed by Ellen Callas, with music and lyrics by Pat Moran, the cast features old favorites like the author, Velina Brown, Victor Toman, Ed Holmes, Lisa Hori-Garcia and Kevin Ralston. 

Other local performances will include Thursday, July 17, at the Montclair Ballfield (music at 6:30 p.m.); Sunday afternoon, July 22, at Oakland’s Mosswood Park; Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 8 and 9, at Lakeside Park on Lake Merritt (music at 6:30 p.m.); and back to Berkeley for Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 11-12, in Live Oak Park. For more information, see www.sfmt.org.