The MimeCast is a series of biographical podcast interviews of current and veteran members of the Tony and OBIE award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe which focus on their personal stories before their time with SFMT, their development as artists, and their lives in general.
Hugo E Carbajal
has performed with great theatre companies in Denver, San Francisco Bay Area, and Arizona. He is a former collective company member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and has worked with companies such as: Cal Shakes, Arizona Theatre Company, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, TeatroVision, Su Teatro, among others. Hugo is grateful to have had the opportunity to co-star on television shows such as Scandal, Chance, and most recently on Brooklyn Nine Nine. Hugo's first film experience was on the set of Silver City, by John Sayles, and he has since worked on several other films such as: El Camino, Lifeline, Cumpleañera, The Boatman, Cold-Pressed, among others.
Lizzie Calogero
is an ex-Collective Member and Mime Troupe regular, having played Jill Hawkins in 2019’s Treasure Island, and having appeared in Walls, 2012 the Musical, Too Big to Fail, and Red State over the years. With roots in the United Kingdom, she has performed in plays around the Bay Area, with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theatre Company, Aurora Theatre, SF Playhouse, Center Rep, and Symmetry Theatre among others.
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro
is a Collective and Board Member with the Tony award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Since 1987, she has been an Actor, Designer, Co- Writer and Director with the Company and has been in almost every summer show since joining. Carreiro has performed at theaters throughout the Bay Area, including Berkeley Repertory Theatre, A.C.T. , The Magic Theater, The Aurora Theater, Word for Word, and Center Rep. She was nominated for The Shellie Award for Outstanding Actress in the role of Grace in “The Sisters Matsumoto” at Center Rep. She is an award winning Costume Designer ,nominated for TBA Best Costumes, Bay Area Critics Circle award, and recipient of the 2018 Meritorious Achievement Award,(American College Theater Festival). Carreiro teaches with The San Francisco Opera Guilds’ “Book to Bravo”and “Voices for Social Justice” programs and enjoys raising up the next generation of artist/activists.
Rotimi Agbabiaka
is a member of the Mime Troupe collective. He most recently originated the roles of Salima in House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre) and Cellphone in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhf*cka (Playwrights Horizons, NYC) and has performed with Yale Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Magic Theatre, and Theatreworks, among others.Rotimi has written the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO, and co-wrote the musical, Seeing Red (with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe) for the Mime Troupe. As a teacher, Rotimi helps students from pre-school through adulthood build their acting, movement, and play creation skills. When not on the stage or in the classroom, Rotimi can be found trying to get fluent in Spanish or playing with Bernini, his cat.
Bruce Barthol
Born at Alta Bates Hospital, Berkeley, California, Bruce was the original bass player with Country Joe and the Fish through to November 1968. After a European tour of the band Bruce stayed in England, eventually forming Formerly Fat Harry with Gary Peterson and fellow Berkeley native, and one time denizen of the Jabberwock, Phil Greenberg. Upon his return to the Bay Area, Barthol formed Energy Crisis with some ex-members of the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band before becoming the musical director for the Tony Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1976, a position he kept until his retirement from the Troupe in 2009. While with SFMT Bruce created music and/or lyrics for the Troupe’s most critically-acclaimed shows, including 1985, SPAIN, RIPPED VAN WINKLE, SOCIAL WORK, 1600 TRANSYLVANIA AVENUE, MR. SMITH GOES TO OBSCURISTAN, and 2012 - THE MUSICAL. In 2004 to 2006, Barthol also joined ex-Country Joe and the Fish members Joe McDonald, David Bennett Cohen and Chicken Hirsh for a number of short tours of the United States and the UK. After Bruce retired from The Troupe in 2009 he also released his acclaimed solo album The Decline and Fall of Everything. He has also written for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and the Oberlin Dance Company. Barthol is currently playing bass with the Former Members who include Greg Douglass, Roy Blumenfeld and David Bennett Cohen in their line-up. He holds an MFA in Musical Theater from New York University.
Wilma Bonet
A past collective member, she has directed several San Francisco Mime Troupe’s summer show “Treasure Island”, “Ripple Effect”, “2012 the Musical”, “Possibilidad or Death of a Worker” and “Too Big To Fail” all written by Michael Gene Sullivan. She has also directed Jose Rivera’s “School of the Americas”, Sandra Cisnero’s “The House On Mango Street”, Milcha Sanchez Scott’s Evening “Star/Doglady”, Eduardo Machado’s “The Cook”, Roy Conboy’s “Drive My Coche”, Octavio Solis’s “La Posada Magica”, and Jorge Gonzalez’s “Vieques” (West coast premiere) all at Teatro Vision in San Jose. Her other directing credits includes: Jeannie Barroga’s “Walls”, for Asian American Theater, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” for Women’s Will, “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” for Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, “Fronteras Americanas” for TheaterFIRST, “Miriam’s Flowers” for Cal State University Sacramento. She has also directed for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto and Latina Theatre Lab at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
A professional actress, she has appeared in numerous plays on stages across the country, recently in Magic Theatre’s world premiere of Ricardo Perez Gonzalez’s “Don’t Eat The Mango”, Playground’s “Anna Considers Mars” and Ubuntu Theater’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” by Tony Kushner. She has appeared on television as well as on screen most recently in COCO.
Velina Brown
is an award-winning actress, singer/songwriter, director, and educator based in San Francisco. Her stage credits include performances with the American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, The California Shakespeare Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, The Denver Theatre Company, The Magic Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, TheatreWorks, Shotgun Players, Central Works, CenterREP, as well as with the Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, where she has been a principal actor and guiding force for the company for over twenty years, touring nationally and internationally, helping create dozens of world premiere political musical dramas and comedies, each examining issues of peace, equality, or economic and social justice. Velina has also toured internationally Word for Word, and in 2016 recorded “For Those Who Came After: Songs from the Spanish Civil War” with Brooklyn based ensemble Barbez, after which she performed with the band Spain and Portugal. Velina’s Film and TV appearances include Chance, Party of Five, Nash Bridges, Trauma, Final Witness, Bee Season, Maladaptive, One Way to Valhalla, and Milk. Velina is a two-time winner of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critic's Circle award, and in 2012 was honored as part of Theatre Bay Area Magazine 35th Anniversary as one of the "35 Faces" that had made significant contributions to the Bay Area theater community. Velina is also a teacher, career coach, and writes the monthly column for Theatre Bay Area Magazine “The Business of Show Biz.” Velina graduated Magna Cum Laude from San Francisco State University, and has a Master's Degree in Counseling.
ED HOLMES….so far
First 19 years…East Cleveland Ohio
Next 7 years…US Navy. Machinist mate (steam mechanic). 2 pig boats (submarines), one smoke (diesel), one steam (nuclear), and a bird farm (aircraft carrier).
Next 50 years…performer by way of Laney JC (mime), Cal State Hayward (BA Theater arts), Mills College (MA dance), Familia/Fratelli Bologna, Antenna Theater, Young Audiences of the Bay Area (history of clowns and mimes), SF Opera, Oakland Symphony,'The Right Stuff', 'Subhuman-true tales from beneath the sea', SF Mime Troupe ('86-2014), Theater RAB Freiburg Germany “Tip of the Iceberg” (writer/director), Rhythmix Cultural Works Alameda History performances 'Island City Waterways' (writer/performer 2016-2020).
Physical theater instructor... CSUH, Mills College, ACT, SF Museum of Art, Dreamworks, Sony Animation, Pacific Data Image, SF Mime Troupe.
Extra miscellaneous…Saint Stupid’s day parade instigator ’79-2020 (First Church of the Last Laugh), Lazlo bean-Dip School of Jalopy Photography, Berkeley Side-Kick Institute, desert rat, feral musician, grandfather.
all reasonable offers considered.
Gabby Momah
(G/they/them/theirs) is a black queer theatermaker based in Oakland, CA. G was a 2017 summer workshopper with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and went on to work with Crowded Fire Theater, Bay Area Children's Theater, Killing My Lobster, New Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, American Conservatory Theater, and more. In these times of COVID-19, they have been spending their days cooking, hiking, and playing their xylophone to stay sane!
Amos Glick
Amos' career has splintered off into many directions and because of this he jokingly refers to himself as a hack of all trades. An actor, clown, improviser, teacher, composer, musician, lyricist, director, writer, producer and filmmaker, Glick, despite lack of focus in one area, has been able to cobble together 30 years of professional work in entertainment. Favorite projects include: 17 years with the Tony Award-winning SF Mime Troupe, Clown in Le Reve, Sir Andrew Aguecheek at SF Shakespeare Festival, Various Roles at Alter Theatre, Smoke X7 at Tenderloin Opera Company, Tonal Chaos (musical improv), True Fiction Magazine (improv), BATS Improv, The Management (sketch), Writer/Producer/Actor for the short film A Man Wakes Up, Composer/Musician/Producer A Little Bit San (EP by Ponder), Producer/Director and Host of OK, OK, the Amos Glick variety show, Bread and Puppet, Clown in The New Pickle Family Circus, playing in the bands A Rare Thing, The Bastard Brothers and Koocheekoo among others. Film: Popovich: The Road To Hollywood, A Man Wakes Up, The Village Barbershop, Around The Fire. TV: Unannounced Disney+ mini series, Agents Of Shield, Just Roll With It, Nash Bridges.
Daniel Savio
started his professional theater career playing for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, participating in the tours for GodFellas ('06) and Making a Killing ('07), and returned for Freedomland ('15), Schooled ('16) and WALLS ('17). He was co-composer/lyricist, with SFMT vet Bruce Barthol, of the play FSM ('14, Stagebridge Senior Theater), written by fellow SFMT vet Joan Holden. Daniel has composed the scores of four musicals for young audiences at Stagebridge, all with book and lyrics by Josiah Polhemus. He also composed original music for an early production of Lauren Yee's A Man, His Wife, and his Hat ('11, AlterTheater). Daniel plays keyboards for The 808 Band, winner of the 2011 North Bay Bohemian Award for Best Hip Hop Band, which has backed many hip hop and reggae performers including KRS-ONE, MC Radioactive, and Robert Herrera. He has performed as an improv pianist with the Perennials, the Antic Witties, the Un-Scripted Theater Company, 6th Street Improv!, and the Midnight Matinee. Daniel has a BA in Music from the University of California at Santa Cruz and studies with Bay Area composer Michael Kaulkin.
BRIAN RIVERA
is a professional actor with membership in AEA & SAG/AFTRA. He's worked for numerous theatre companies throughout Northern California, most especially with the SF Mime Troupe (most recently in last year's Treasure Island) and Campo Santo (most recently in Translating Selena.) Brian made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award winning revival of The King & I at Lincoln Center & subsequently the First National Broadway Tour. His other credits include the US Premiere of The Orphan of Zhao at ACT & La Jolla Playhouse, Major Barbara at ACT & Theatre Calgary, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Yellowjackets, and California Shakepeare Theater's American Night. He earned his B.A. in Drama from San Francisco State University. Brian can be seen as a principal character in the dark Christmas comedy Bitter Melon, now streaming free on Amazon Video.
RON P. MURIERA (he/his/him)
has over 20-years of experience and knowledge as an arts and culture administrator, a multi-disciplined performing artist (actor, dancer, musician, comedian), community activist, educator, historian, and advocate for underrepresented communities locally, regionally, and nationally. He has dedicated his life’s work to racial, social, and economic justice, equitable access to the arts for youth, cultural representation, and the inclusion of marginalized groups in spaces where they have traditionally been excluded. After having performed in over a dozen productions at San Francisco’s Asian American Theater Company, Ron’s theatre journey with the San Francisco Mime Troupe began in 1987 with the remounting of the Mime Troupe’s iconic production of THE DRAGON LADY’S REVENGE (A CLASSIC RETURNS) in which he portrayed the naive, soon-to-be drug-addicted army officer Lt. Clyde Dillsworth Junkcer III. This followed with several roles in another revival production, SECRETS IN THE SAND (1989) where he portrayed Bogatar the Barbarian and record producer Marvelous Marvin. SECRETS IN THE SAND toured several cities in Southern California which included Los Angeles and San Diego. Ron’s last role on stage with the Mime Troupe was a co-production with San Francisco State University of SPAIN/36 where he played the role of Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti. Ron’s involvement with SFMT continued on a different level as he helped establish the Mime Troupe’s Youth Theater Project in 1991. Ron currently is owner/principal consultant of RPM Consulting based in San José where he works with arts and cultural organizations build their sustainability and capacity. As a former arts commissioner with the San José Arts Commission, he held the positions of Vice Chair and Public Art Committee Chair during his 8-year term. Presently, Ron is Board Vice President of two state-wide arts advocacy organizations: Californians for the Arts and California Arts Advocates. Additionally, he is co-founding board president of Red Ladder Theatre Company, a San José-based theater company which focuses on social justice issues, and is co-founder of San José Arts Advocates, a collaborative of the San José creative community dedicated to education, advocacy, and action to support arts and culture.
Kathleen Antonia Tarr
is a polymath who graduated from Harvard Law School after receiving her B.A. in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley with a minor in Afro-American Studies. She is an award-winning vocalist and filmmaker with television, film, commercial, and stage acting credits including "Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan" performed with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Born into a family of scientists, Kathleen spent much of her childhood in the lab, sequencing her first proteins the summer after second grade (well, okay; all she did was push a button). As a young adult, she served in the “legal Peace Corps” (Skadden Fellow) and since then has published numerous articles and spoken worldwide as an activist for social justice including sharing some of her personal experiences in her TEDx Talk “Living As So Many Of Us: A Journey Across Races”. In 2014, Kathleen founded the annual Getting Played Symposium on Equity in the Entertainment Industry and Awards; among those honored at the first symposium was SFMT’s Michael Gene Sullivan and in 2017 Velina Brown. Fun fact: announced as “rowing royalty” after winning her 2k race in the 2019 World and USRowing Indoor National Championships, Kathleen has set and/or broken more than 50 world indoor rowing records.
Andrea Snow
is a former member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Andrea served as actor, writer, director and composer. Currently she teaches for the company’s after school Youth Theater Project. Andrea also clowned with the Pickle Family Circus, and was a frequent writer/directer for Make*A*Circus, a theatrical circus. She’s written and directed for a variety of companies, solo performers and projects, including a children’s TV series. Andrea has taught acting, voice and musical theater creation. Andrea is also a speech-language pathologist.
Randy Craig
has written more than 40 scores for the stage and a whole bunch of scores for film. He has been part of two Obie Award-winning plays and scored an Academy Award-nominated film. His work has been seen and heard at the Mill Valley Film Festival and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival among others around the world. A recipient of the Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical Score, Randy has worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, was a founding member of The Pickle Family Circus, and has been a composer and musical director or merely piano player at most of the San Francisco Bay Area theaters. He teaches all over the place including being an Artist In Residence at the Ruth Asawa High School of the Arts in San Francisco. He also teaches privately. He has a BA in Theatre Arts from Pomona College where he studied with Andrew Doe. Randy recently wrote the score and played in MacArthur Award winner Bill Irwin’s production of “Scapin” at the American Conservatory Theatre. Rob Hurwitt, Theater Critic for the SF Chronicle declared it ”one of the season’s ten best”. So what does he know? Randy has a son, Ian a daughter-in law, Hallie and a grandaughter Isla. He is married to the actress, Stacy Ross. www.craigandmacgregor.com
Christian Cagigal
U.S. born son of Salvadoran and Spanish immigrants, Christian Cagigal splits his time between San Francisco and New York City: Magician at Speakeasy Magick at the McKittrick Hotel in NYC, Co-Producer for Odd Salon NYC, Owner of the San Francisco Ghost Hunt, and Co-Founder of Fog City Magic Fest. Cagigal has twice been named a Finalist for the Theatre Bay Area Award for Best Solo Performer, recipient of a Mastermind Award by the SF Weekly, and five-time winner of the Best Magician of the Bay Award by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His previous shows include, the popular Pandora Experiment, the long-running OBSCURA, the secretive happenings of The Collection, and the critically acclaimed Now and at the Hour which has been seen in New York, Montréal, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis and San Francisco – all shows originally produced by EXIT Theatre. Christian has consulted for A.C.T.'s MFA program, Shotgun Players, Crowded Fire Theatre Company, Marin Shakespeare Company, EXIT Theatre, Wilderness, and Tilted Frame. Christian can also be seen in the independent, power-pop, musical film, Fruit Fly written and directed by H.P. Mendoza.
Robert Alexander
is the author of 33 plays including SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE (a play about the rise and fall of Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party) and the widely seen, I AIN’T YO’ UNCLE: THE NEW JACK REVISIONIST UNCLE TOM’S CABIN and SECRETS IN THE SANDS, the latter two originally written for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He is also the author of the very popular and much produced, THE HOURGLASS. As the playwright-in-residence at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, he wrote several world premieres for that company including AIR GUITAR (a rock opera) and SUPER BOWL (a tragicomedy about racism in the NFL.) His works have been produced by some of the top regional theatres in the country including the Kennedy Center, Inner City Cultural Center, Los Angeles Theatre Center, The Hartford Stage Company, Jomandi Productions, St. Louis Black Repertory Company, Crossroads Theatre Company, Oakland Ensemble Theatre Company, The Mark Taper Forum, Karamu House, The Arena Players, Trinity Repertory Company, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Horizon Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Cultural Odyssey, B.A.C.C.E. and the National Pastime Theatre of Chicago.
His most recent plays are, ALIEN MOTEL 29, which together with FREAK OF NATURE and A PREFACE TO THE ALIEN GARDEN (Broadway Play Publishing 2001,) constitute the EROTIC JUSTICE TRILOGY, BULLETPROOF HEARTS, GRAVITY PULLS AT THE SPEED OF DARKNESS, EROTIC JUSTICE, THE NEIGHBOR’S DOG IS ALWAYS BARKING, HOME FREE ,HANDLE WITH CARE, HATEMACHINE, THE LAST ORBIT OF BILLY MARS, WILL HE BOP, WILL HE DROP? ON A STREET WITH NO NAME, WHO’S AFRAID OF TIGER WOODS? and FORTY ACRES.. These latter plays have come to be known as the EROTIC JUSTICE PLAY CYCLE. Many of Alexander’s early plays have been printed in various anthologies and l AIN’T YO’ UNCLE is now available through Dramatic Publishing Company.
Alexander has edited several play anthologies including PLAYS FROM WOOLLY MAMMOTH (Broadway Play Publishing, 1999). THE FIRE THIS TIME with Harry Elam for TCG Books which was published in 2004 and includes plays by Alexander, August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks and Lynn Nottage amongst others.. Alexander and Elam have previously co-edited COLORED CONTRADICTIONS: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays (Penguin/Plume, 1996.) COLORED CONTRADICTIONS includes works by Alexander, Suzan-Lori Parks, Cheryl West, Rhodessa Jones, Keith Antar Mason, Pomo Afro Homos, Carlyle Brown, Shay Youngblood, Talvin Wilks, Kia Corthron and many others.
Alexander is the recipient of numerous writing awards and fellowships including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Alexander is the former NEA/TCG resident playwright at Jomandi Productions in Atlanta, Georgia and the former playwright-in-residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., thanks to a residency made possible by TCG and the Pew Charitable Trusts’ National Theatre Artist Residency Program.
A graduate of Oberlin College, Alexander also holds an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, where he was a Patricia Roberts Harris Fellow.
