For their 65th season, the San Francisco Mime Troupe is touring the Bay Area with a new musical political satire, American Dreams.
Velina Brown, director of the production, speaks candidly about the contentious themes highlighted in the play, including the Israeli war on Palestinians, the possibility of another MAGA presidency, the perils of artificial intelligence and the future of democracy.
JOHN MALKIN: In the play, a student activist named Emma says that 120,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed or wounded since Oct. 7, 2023. Tell me why American Dreams is happening now.
VELINA BROWN: We’re doing this play because it’s an election year and at the same time, we’ve got this war happening—from our perspective a genocide—with Israel against Palestinians. There’s also the pervasiveness and rise of artificial intelligence and what that could mean for humans.
There’s this guy who was part of the creation of AI and he’s now saying, “AI is bad. This is not going to go well for humanity.” It’s similar to other creators who come up with something and it turns into something terrible, like Oppenheimer and the bomb. It’s like, “I made this, but not with that intention.” But once it’s here, it’s like a genie out of the bottle.
Michael Gene Sullivan is our playwright. He’s also my husband! Our play is called American Dreams because we all grew up with the idea of the “American Dream,” and now our country is so fractured that the idea of a unified concept of the American Dream just doesn’t seem to be the case. Hence the plural American Dreams and the idea that one person’s dream could very well be another person’s nightmare.
I agree that we don’t have a democratic culture with robust discussions when new technologies like nuclear weapons or AI are developed, asking “Is this actually beneficial?”
The thing about capitalism is that what’s most important within the mindset of that system is, will this make money? And it’s not for all of us to share in the fruits of our labor. It’s for a few people to make a lot of money. That’s more important than “Will it do harm?”
This person who is running again for the presidency, he’s wanting to continue with deregulations and getting rid of the Department of Education and the department that takes care of our soil and water. Can you imagine if there’s no oversight, how many toxins are going to end up further poisoning our food chain? But if there’s money to be made—that’s the highest priority. The Mime Troupe is always asking, “What are the priorities?” And we’re always coming from the perspective of the person who has to work for a living.
One character in American Dreams is a college professor named Payne who says, “Criticizing Palestinian oppression is not antisemitic.” Payne also says, “Native Americans, Armenia, Rwanda, South Sudan—all genocide is wrong. Before World War II even started, America should have stopped the Nazi genocide.” A lot of people think the US responded quickly to stop the Nazis, but in reality, US corporations and government actually participated in supporting the Nazis in a variety of ways.
One of the things that’s really helpful for the Mime Troupe is that our writer, Michael [Gene Sullivan], is really a historian, so that’s helpful in making the shows deeper. We’ve definitely had people complain about the Israel/Gaza conversation, saying, “How you’re putting that is not fair.” Some say it’s antisemitic, but of course we reject that. We’re not antisemitic. There are people within our company who are Jewish, who feel that what’s happening in Israel is a genocide and that it’s not a proportional reaction to what happened. Saying that it’s antisemitic doesn’t take into consideration the oppression of Palestinians for decades. To criticize a government doesn’t mean you’re criticizing everyone of Jewish descent. That’s very lazy thinking, to put it bluntly.
We’re actually circling back around to this issue. In 1988 the Mime Troupe did a show called Seeing Double that was about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It toured and played off-Broadway in New York, and then it went to Israel and Palestine and played both sides. It was actually very dangerous to do that. It was before I was in the company. It’s a twin story, and Michael played both twins: an American Jewish kid and an American Palestinian kid. The play was calling for a two-state solution, and there was a lot of idealism in that. We couldn’t do that show now. Too much stuff has happened. So, it’s something we’ve been tracking as artist-activists for some time and it felt really important to come back and say, “This is how we see it now.”
Comedian George Carlin used to say the American Dream really means being able to consume more and more and has created a society of consumers rather than participants. I also love this quote by Peter Ustinov, who was an actor and an activist: “American democracy is the unalienable right to sit on your front porch in your pajamas drinking a can of beer and shouting out, ‘Where else is this possible?’” What do you think about the possibility of direct democracy?
It’s interesting when someone says “Power to the people,” that’s seen as a threat. It shouldn’t be threatening. To have a representative government makes a lot of sense because you can tell them what matters to you and it’s their job to press forward. It’s really hard for just under 350 million people in this country to all be trying to talk at once. It’s time consuming to make so many decisions! I’m getting so many texts and different polls. Who has time or money to respond to all of these things?
In American Dreams Professor Payne says, “The revolution isn’t about instant gratification. Change happens slowly, then all at once.” I often think that since the ’60s the revolution has not been very successful. What do you think?
It’s ridiculous to say that absolutely nothing has changed, because a lot has changed. I know that’s not what you’re saying. You’re saying you expected things to be further along by now. But it’s kind of a pendulum. If the Voting Rights Act had never passed, then the political right wouldn’t be working so hard to make it hard for people of color to vote. They wouldn’t have been working so hard for the past 50 years to take away Roe v Wade if it had never passed. Things have improved over time, but there’s people pushing back. Rust never sleeps. You can’t just go, “We won that. We can go sit on the porch and drink a beer in our pajamas and be done with it.” You’re not done! You’re never done. People have been fighting for freedom and justice and there’s a point where the older people should impart their wisdom and younger people take the baton and keep moving forward. We have accomplished a lot and we need to continue.
American Dreams, written by Michael Gene Sullivan with music and lyrics by Daniel Savio, plays at 7pm on Aug 29 at the Hal Todd Theatre in Hugh Gillis Hall, 220 E San Fernando St, San Jose. Admission is free and donations support the San Francisco Mime Troupe. RSVP required; visit sfmt.org/event-details/hugh-gillis-hall-san-jose.
