Michael Gene Sullivan of The San Francisco Mime Troupe

The Tony Award-Winning SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE Debuts
a NEW Activist Adaptation of the Dickens Classic as a Radio Play

A RED CAROL 

An Activist Adaptation of the Dickens Classic

Written and Directed by Michael Gene Sullivan

Begins streaming FREE on Fri. Nov. 26, 2021 - Jan. 9, 2022 (donations accepted)

For the first time the SF Mime Troupe presents a Holiday Audio offering with a worker’s take on the Dicken’s classic in A Red Carol. With its particular blend of activism, comedy, music, and passion the SFMT's labor-oriented adaptation of Dickens "A Christmas Carol” reclaims this revolutionary classic as a story not of the redemption of one bad man, but as the never-ending story of all of us making the world a more progressive place.

In A Red Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a corporate banker, busy foreclosing on the hapless masses. Bob Cratchit and his beleaguered family live in a chilly tent in an anonymous homeless encampment. The ghost of Christmas future sports a flowing black robe of taped-together trash bags and plastic sheeting. Tiny Tim dies. At least that’s how the SF Mime Troupe’s resident playwright, Michael Gene Sullivan, has reimagined A Red Carol for the troubled 21st century.

A Christmas Carol” has become “the closest thing to a modern myth that we have. It wasn’t much of a stretch to place Charles Dickens’ Victorian classic into today’s Covid-19 world. And that, as Sullivan would be the first to tell you, is exactly the point. Dickens’ novella was written in the heart of the “Hungry ’40s,” a time of labor unrest, unemployment and starvation across 19th-century Europe. The gap between rich and poor was wide - and getting ever wider.

With the limited release of A Red Carol, the San Francisco Mime Troupe hopes it will become an annual alternative holiday tradition for the workers of the world.

For more information visit www.sfmt.org or call 415-285-1717. 

CRITICS SAY

“The play, in its skewering of America’s social ills—racism, corporate greed, the plight of the working class—is so funny, and so well acted by the Troupe, including longtime ensemble members Velina Brown, Keiko Shimosato-Carreiro and Brian Rivera , that it comes to life even without visuals and minus the appreciative laughter of a sun-soaked audience. The second half of “The Mystery of the Missing Worker” airs Aug. 29.”

SF Examiner - July 6, 2020

​“As a spoof of serials past, it’s solid, quick-witted, and sets the bar high for subsequent episodes, which will satirize other radio-drama templates—namely adventure, horror, and science fiction."

KQED - July 8, 2020

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MICHAEL GENE SULLIVAN

Actor, Director, Teacher, and Resident Playwright

Michael Gene Sullivan has performed in, written, and/or directed over thirty SFMT productions. As an actor Sullivan has also appeared in productions at the American Conservatory Theater, Californian Shakespeare Theatre, Theatreworks, San Francisco Playhouse, Denver Center Theater Company, The Aurora Theatre, The Magic Theatre, The Marin Theatre Company, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Repertory Theater, and San Jose Repertory Theater. Michael has been a principal actor in Mime Troupe plays since 1988, performing in Freedomland, Ripple Effect, For The Greater Good, 2012: The Musical, Posibilidad, Too Big To Fail, Making a Killing, GodFellas, Doing Good, Showdown at Crawford Gulch, Mister Smith Goes to Obscuristan, Eating it, Damaged Care, Soul Suckers form Outer Space, Revenger Rat, Escape to Cyberia, Offshore, Social Work, I Ain't You uncle, Back to Normal, Rats, Seeing Double, and Ripped Van Winkle. His directing credits at SFMT include Schooled, For The Greater Good, Red State, Veronique of the Mounties, 1600 Transylvania Avenue, Killing Time, and Coast City Confidential, Michael has also directed for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, African American Shakespeare Company, Mystic Bison Theater, and Circus Finelli. Michael is a Resident Playwright for the Playwrights' Foundation, a 2017 Resident Artist at the Djerassi Arts Center, from 2009 - 2016 he was a blogger for The Huffington Post, and Michael has been SFMT's Resident Playwright since 2000.