Speaking Their Mimes

In 1968, during the depths of the Vietnam War, the San Francisco Mime Troupe was banned from Cal State Fullerton because administrators feared the agitprop group would incite antiwar violence, according to one retired professor.

“These were very troubling times on college campuses,” where protesters railed against the war, James D. Young, who ran the school’s theater department, said this week.

Activists at Cal State smashed windows and set a building on fire, Young recalled, and while these incidents were not linked to the mime troupe, which has used words for most of its 40 years, its plays “made antiwar statements.”

No argument there, says Dan Chumley, a veteran member of the Tony Award-winning ensemble, appearing at Cal State Long Beach tonight.

“We had just come back from a tour of ‘L’Amant Militaire,’ which encouraged people to resist the draft,” Chumley said. “But basically the company was banned because it had a way of sparking crowds. [Founder R.G.] Davis would say, ‘This is your world, your college; if you don’t like it, you have to change it, and if you can’t change it, you have to destroy it.’ ‘

Two years later Davis left the troupe (which was also eventually invited back to Cal State Fullerton), but it nonetheless got kicked off other campuses around the same time and made headlines for obscenity and charges of pot possession.

All that simmered down, but the company has never stopped firing their own social and political salvos with a raucous mix of satire and slapstick enacted by raffishly costumed, singing players accompanied by live music and boom!-bash!-blam! sound effects.

Dancer and mime Davis (now an environmental activist in San Francisco) created the company in 1959 as an extension of the experimental San Francisco Actors Workshop. Its first few works were wordless, but early on Davis adapted a commedia dell’arte style, employing the essence of mime--character portrayal.

In recent years, the troupe has taken on such dicey issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, landlord-tenant struggles and racism. Its newest farce, “Damaged Care,” to be performed tonight, lampoons America’s health-care system.

“We’ve made health care into a commodity” instead of a service, said Chumley, 51, who has been the collectively run company’s principle director since 1970. “A service is something you give. A commodity is something you sell.”

Set in Padua, Italy, the play follows the chaos created by the greedy Dr. Capitano’s efforts to subsume failing public hospitals into his for-profit corporation, Capacare, Chumley said by phone during a two-week residency at Cal State Long Beach that ends with tonight’s show.

To turn a profit at Bologna General, his final conquest, Capitano “has to reduce staff, reduce standards, cut back on patient services and close the ER,” Chumley said, which conflicts with Nurse Basil’s desire to give good care and nearly kills her with overwork.

One sympathetic doctor remarks that “Florence Nightingale couldn’t handle that load,” to which Capitano retorts: “That’s why Florence doesn’t work here anymore.”

Other gags skewer marketing lingo with lines such as “we give you less and charge you more” and ridicule hospital voicemail. Callers hear such recorded instructions as “If you have a bleeding heart, press six now.” The piece ends, in traditional commedia dell’arte style, Chumley said, with a bald plea: “Pay for [health care] with taxes, and make it free.”

Inspired by aging friends and relatives’ experiences with managed medicine, principle mime troupe playwright Joan Holden (Chumley’s longtime companion) wrote the play with Karim Scarlata, who has penned others for the company.

It came together after Chumley, a fast-talker who peppers his speech with obscenities and goofy characters’ voices, interviewed nurses, doctors and other health-care professionals.

Chumley spoke to one doctor, he said, who treats a cancer patient who liked to come in every other week or so. Simply getting ready to go to hospital helps keeps her healthy, the doctor said, but he had to tell her to stay home.

“The doctor says this woman will not live as long as she would if she could just drop by,” said Chumley, who no longer performs with the troupe.

Disparaging the disparity between services for the rich and the poor, Chumley added: “If we think of the planet as a spaceship, we can’t have the bridge well while the engine room is sick.”

Performed by six actors in masks, the play got less than sanguine reviews when it premiered July 4 in San Francisco’s Dolores Park (where the company traditionally opens its seasons). Chumley admitted that last minute changes were being made and that the piece wasn’t up to speed. But by the second day, he said, “it was a better show,” and improvements are still being made.

Can health care get better too? Chumley, a father of three, is an optimist.

“I believe that people are capable of great leaps, and I think that at some point, we’ll look at each other and say, ‘Are we here for the bottom line? What do we really need to live a happy life?’ ”

* The San Francisco Mime Troupe will perform “Damaged Care” tonight at 8 p.m. at the Carpenter Center at Cal State Long Beach, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach. $8-$12. (562) 285-1717.