Exodus Is An Illumination Theatre of Madness An Laughter Poetry and Thieves to Steal Your Soul [Flyer for a Berkeley Performance by the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Others]

Berkeley, California: N.p., 1966. Attractive flyer measuring 7 ½ x 10 ½ inches. Fine.. A flyer for a 1966 music, arts, and theater night at the Blind Lemon folk club in Berkeley, California. Acts include a performance by the psychedelic rock band Notes from the Underground, films from Canyon Cinema co-founder Herb de Grass, and “visionary photography” by photographer and noted poster designer Paul Kagan. Perhaps most well-known among the performers is the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Formed in 1959 and still active, the avant-garde theater troupe is known for their purposefully bizarre and often confrontational political and social satire. R. G. Davis, the troupe’s founder, described their mission: “to teach, to direct towards change and be an example of change.”[1] At the time of the Blind Lemon performance, the troupe’s regular show was A Minstrel Show, which, as the name suggests, consisted of blackface minstrelsy.

Of interest to historians of the artistic counterculture of the 1960s, especially in the Bay Area.

[1] R. G. Davis, The San Francisco Mime Troupe: the first ten years (Ramparts Press, 1975), 70.