Title: Ronald Guy Davis Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1954-1974

Creator:

• Davis, R. G., 1933-

Call Number: Mss 131

Quantity: 2.0 c.f. (5 archives boxes)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Papers of Ronald Guy Davis, a radical writer, actor, and director, who founded the San Francisco Mime Troupe, one of the first American “guerrilla theatre” groups. Davis, who was particularly interested in the study and performance of mime, also helped found the Artists' Liberation Front, Radical Booking Agency, and R.G. Davis Mime Troupe, all in San Francisco. The collection documents Davis's artistic activities and ideas, 1958-1970, and the history and daily workings of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, as well as provides an impression of the nature and scope of the avant-garde, radical, and anti-establishment atmosphere of San Francisco and the nation during the 1960's. Included are biographical materials and memorabilia regarding Davis; a writings file containing Davis's non-dramatic material and a draft of his book, The San Francisco Mime Troupe (1975); and an organizations file, with papers relating to various performing groups with which Davis was connected. Materials regarding the San Francisco Mime Troupe are most complete, and include records and photographs of many of its productions.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00131

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Ronald Guy Davis, the founder and director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. He began his professional career as the teenaged band leader of “Ronny Davis and his Orchestra.” After receiving a B.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1955, he studied modern dance with Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon, and Martha Graham. He also acted at the Herbert Berghoff Studios and performed with the American Mime Theatre from 1955 to 1957. Davis was so impressed by a Marcel Marceau performance, that in 1957 he applied for and received a Fulbright grant to study under Marceau's teacher Etienne Decroux at the Ecole de Mime in Paris. On returning to the U.S. in 1958, Davis settled in San Francisco, a city he considered culturally more attractive than New York; there he performed his own mimes and taught mime. In the summers of 1958 and 1959, he also taught mime at the Perry-Mansfield School in Colorado.

In 1959 he began to perform with and act as assistant director for the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, a professional repertory company, within which he organized the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe. Following a dispute with the Workshop's administrators over the artist's political obligations, Davis and the mime troupe broke away from the Workshop in 1962 and adopted the title of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe, which coined the term “guerrilla theatre,” was one of the first American radical theatres. Its productions (“committed to change, not Art”) satirized the Establishment, sex, civil rights, and the military through performances that ranged from commedia dell'arte to happenings to free shows in San Francisco's public parks. The troupe was supported by donations requested after park shows and by fees received on university and college tours. As part of their increasing political involvement, in 1966, Davis and the San Francisco Mime Troupe were responsible for founding the Artists' Liberation Front (ALF) and the Radical Booking Agency. The ALF was intended to organize San Francisco's artists into a federation or co-op controlled by member artists for the defense of their artistic endeavors against censorship, “to stop cultural blight and rip-off.” The Radical Booking Agency, 1966-1968, provided non-union theatrical groups like the mime troupe and the FUGs, a rock singing group, with a non-union, non-commercial booking agency.

Following problems within the organization, Davis left the Mime Troupe in 1970 to found a Marxist theater department at Columbia College in Chicago. He soon returned to San Francisco to work for Praxis, an organization he considered politically more effective. Since then Davis has opened Epic West, a center for the study of Bertolt Brecht in Berkeley, California, and the Cultural Training Center in San Francisco. He has also written a book, The San Francisco Mime Troupe: The First Ten Years (1975) and has other writing projects in preparation.

Since Davis's departure in 1970, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has become a multi-racial collective of about 18 members. The troupe still performs in San Francisco parks as well as touring the country. Although it still relies heavily on mime technique and improvisation in preparing shows, it has done fewer commedia dell'arte plays and has concentrated on more overtly political plays. The troupe has toured Europe twice; and in 1980 was the first American theater group invited to tour Cuba by the Cuban minister of culture. Notable productions since 1970 include The Dragon Lady's Revenge (for which the troupe won an Obie Award in 1973), False Promises, By Popular Demand, and Americans or The Last Tango in Huahuatenango, all written by members of the troupe, The Mother by Bertolt Brecht, and We Can't Pay; We Won't Pay by Dario Fo.

The papers mainly document Davis's artistic activities and ideas about mime and the theater between the years of 1958 and 1970, the period of his residence in San Francisco. It is important not only because it charts Davis's political and artistic development but also because it covers much of the history and daily workings of his major production group, the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Taken as a whole, the collection provides a good impression of the nature and scope of the avant-garde, radical, and anti-establishment atmosphere of San Francisco, in particular, and of the entire country, in general, during the middle and late 1960's. In addition, the various clipping files -- mainly in the review and trial folders -- give an impression of establishment attitudes toward the avant-garde.

The collection consists of notes, drafts of articles and of a book, programs, reviews, schedules, scripts; and business, legal and financial materials. There is, however, a notable lack of correspondence in both the personal and organizational portions of the collection. The papers have been organized into three series: Biographical Materials and Memorabilia, Writings, and Organizations.

BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS AND MEMORABILIA consists of four folders. The first two contain clippings and a biographical magazine article, and posters, playbills, reviews, and other such material dealing with Davis's early life and artistic activities before joining the Actor's Workshop. The last two folders contain photographs of Davis in and out of performance and of a dance concert in which he took part in New Mexico in 1952.

The WRITINGS file contains Davis's non-dramatic material. Included are articles and speeches, reviews broadcast by KPFA in San Francisco, journal notes, and most of the fourth revised edition of his book manuscript The San Francisco Mime Troupe (1975), here referred to as “Guerrilla Theatre from the Beginning of the World to the Day I Left the San Francisco Mime Troupe.” These items are arranged alphabetically by type and chronologically thereunder. It is here that Davis's theories about mime and pantomime and about the relationship between theater and politics are presented and developed. The various note files appear to be part of a systematic effort to record his thoughts on mime, theater, politics, and life. Together with the “Articles and Speeches” folder they form an informal journal.

The ORGANIZATIONS file is by far the largest of the three series. Included here are documents relating to various organizations with which Davis was connected: Actor's Workshop, R.G. Davis Mime Troupe, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Artists' Liberation Front, and Radical Booking Agency. Materials in this series have been organized into general, business and legal, and production subheadings.

Materials for the Actor's Workshop are sketchy and the few playbills included are the most interesting. Production notes of a type similar to the theoretical notes in the WRITINGS can also be found here. The papers on the Artists' Liberation Front are unusually complete and include the constitution, by-laws, policy statements, agenda and attendance lists of meetings, committee reports, and clippings. The folder on the Radical Booking Agency is more fragmentary and does not indicate how the agency routinely operated.

Material dealing with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and its forerunner, the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe, constitutes the largest set of documents in the collection. Included are scripts, photographs, playbills, posters, schedules, publicity, legal materials, a few financial files, and some business correspondence.

Especially noteworthy among the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe materials are the mime descriptions. Within these folders are very detailed ideas, scenarios, descriptions, floor plans, diagrams, plots, and criticisms. The mimes presented comprise most of the troupe's repertory at that time. Also interesting are the many photographs of their various “Events.”

Materials about the San Francisco Mime Troupe cover all aspects of its operations, although the records are not complete. Many of their productions are not covered at all and others are only sketchily represented. Productions for which holdings are most extensive are L'Amant Militaire, The Condemned, The Exception and the Rule, A Minstrel Show or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, and the unproduced Futz. In addition to these gaps in the production record, many aspects of day-to-day operations are mentioned only incidentally, except for the period of late 1968 to early 1970 for which an almost complete set of daily schedules exists. The researcher is advised to use the material dealing with the troupe in conjunction with the book manuscript in the WRITINGS, which deals with many matters for which there is little documentation in the collection.

There are, however, many interesting items pertaining to the San Francisco Mime Troupe, including a series of audition forms; the troupe song book; articles of incorporation; tax forms, 1966-1968; and tour schedules, 1967-1970. In the Company Meeting folders are many notes and lists which document the organization and reorganization problems which beset the troupe during the first ten years of its existence. Also present is the legal material generated following the arrests of troupe members in Denver, Colorado, and Calgary, Alberta, for performing in A Minstrel Show.

Since members of the troupe apparently tried to conserve paper, many notes and letters are written on the back of old stationery, schedules, posters, playbills, press releases, and mimeographed material that are not elsewhere in the collection.

Since 1970 records of the San Francisco Mime Troupe have been housed at the University of California at Davis.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Ronald Guy Davis, San Francisco, California, 1968-1978. Accession Number: M68-112, M68-190, M70-65, M70-112, M72-108, M74-46, M78-329

Processing Information

Processed in 1972; reprocessed with additions by Tom Pscheidt, 1981.

	Series: Biographical Materials and Memorabilia
Box   1 Folder   1	Clippings, June 30, 1955-September 28, 1959, May 29, 1974
Box   1 Folder   2	Memorabilia, Pre-1955-November 1959, 1964
Box   1 Folder   3-4	Photographs, 1954-1968; Early Career, Albuquerque, , 1955
	Series: Writings	⇧
Box   1 Folder   5	Articles and Speeches, Drafts and Published Material, February 1958-March 1968
Box   1 Folder   6	General Notes and Ideas, August 1954-July 1966
	Guerrilla Theatre from the Beginning of the World to the Day I Left the San Francisco Mime Troupe (book manuscript), January 1972
Box   1 Folder   7	Chapters 2-5
Box   1 Folder   8	Chapter 6
Box   1 Folder   9	Chapters 7-11
Box   1 Folder   10	Chapters 12-14, Chronology
	KPFA Broadcasts, Drafts of Radio Reviews, Playbills
Box   1 Folder   11	1963
Box   2 Folder   1	1964
Box   2 Folder   2-3	Performance Notes, Notes, Playbills; November 1955-March 1962
	Series: Organizations	⇧
	Actor's Workshop
Box   2 Folder   4	General File of Playbills, Reviews, Clippings and Other Material, May 1959-March 1966
Box   2 Folder   5	Performance File from The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw - Program, Notes, Character Analyses, January 1960
Box   2 Folder   6	Artists' Liberation Front - Manifestos, Lists, Minutes, Memoranda, Press Releases; April 1966-March 1967
Box   2 Folder   7	Radical Booking Agency - Lists, Clippings, Notes, Press Releases; April 1966-July 1968
	R.G. Davis Mime Troupe
Box   2 Folder   8	General File of Correspondence, Playbills, and Reviews, June 1959-September 1962
	Production Files
Box   2 Folder   9	Arlecchino and Brighella by Ronald Guy Davis - Drafts and Notes, April 1959-May 1961
	Event I
Box   2 Folder   10	Schedules, Notes, Correspondence, Evaluation, July-December 1961
Box   2 Folder   11-12	Photographs, November 1961
Box   3 Folder   1	Event II - Notes and Sequences, January 1961-December 1962
Box   3 Folder   2	Mime Ideas and Notes, July 1954-September 1966
Box   3 Folder   3-4	Mime Scenarios, Notes, Descriptions, Floorplans, and Evaluations - “Birds” to “Zoo,” 1956-1960
Box   3 Folder   5	Photographs of the Troupe, 1960-1963
	San Francisco Mime Troupe
	General Files
Box   3 Folder   6	Audition Forms and Resumes, 1959-1969; undated
Box   3 Folder   7	Flags and Banners - Correspondence and Article, 1958, June 1967-February 1968
Box   3 Folder   8	Foreign Correspondence, July 1967-October 1970
Box   3 Folder   9	Photographs, undated
Box   3 Folder   10	Projects - Notes and Proposals, January-February 1969
	Publicity
Box   3 Folder   11	Posters and Playbills, May 1963-October 1968, May 1981
Box   3 Folder   12	Press Releases, Summer 1963-1969
Box   3 Folder   13	Reviews, March 1962-March 1971
Box   3 Folder   14	Schedules, Fall 1967-March 1970
	Business and Legal Files
Box   3 Folder   15	Business Manager - Correspondence and Resumes, November 1965-March 1966
Box   4 Folder   1	Calgary Benefit Material, April 1967
Box   4 Folder   2	Calgary Trial - Legal File and Clippings, April 1967- February 1969
Box   4 Folder   3-7	Company Meetings - Notes, Lists, Miscellany and Correspondence, 1963-1970
Box   4 Folder   8	Corporation Papers - Applications and Legal Material, April 1965-March 1968
Box   4 Folder   9	Denver Trial - Legal Material, Correspondence and Clippings, November 1966-February 1967
Box   4 Folder   10	Film Contract with Karl Schedereit of Munich, December 1, 1969; May 25, 1970
Box   4 Folder   11	Financial File - Budgets, Tax Returns, August 1966-October 1968
Box   4 Folder   12	Legal Opinion re: Solicitation in the Parks, March 9, 1967
Box   4 Folder   13	Organization of Troupe, December 1968-December 1969
Box   4 Folder   14	Underground Movies - Financial Material, Poster, November 1965-January 1966
	Production Files
Box   4 Folder   15	Along Came a Spider by Kenneth Lash (played with Event III) - Photographs, February 1964
Box   4 Folder   16	L'Amant Militaire, adapted by Joan Holden from a play by Carlo Goldoni - Script, Program, Notes, 1967
Box   4 Folder   17	Cabaret Theatre - Correspondence and Publicity, August 30-November 28, 1966
Box   4 Folder   18	Colorado State University - Correspondence and Contact Sheet, November 1969-March 1970
Box   4 Folder   19	The Condemned, adapted by the Troupe from The Condemned of Altona by Jean-Paul Sartre - Notes, Program Copy, Annotated Script, 1967
	Event III
Box   4 Folder   20	Photographs, February 1964
Box   5 Folder   1	Photographs, February 1964, continued
Box   5 Folder   2	The Exception and the Rule by Bertolt Brecht - Scripts, Notes, Cast Lists, Poster, Music by Pauline Olivarez, Miscellaneous Other Brecht Material, 1960, 1965
Box   5 Folder   3	Futz by Rochelle Owens - Correspondence, Script, July-November 1965
Box   5 Folder   4	Gorilla Band - Press Releases, Notes, and Lyrics, November 1968, undated
Box   5 Folder   5	Lecture Demonstrations - Notes, Outlines, July-October 1969, undated
Box   5 Folder   6	A Minstrel Show or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, by Saul Landau and Ronald Guy Davis - Script, Correspondence and Posters, 1965, 1969
Box   5 Folder   7	Northwest Tour - Schedule, Contact List, Correspondence, October-December 1969
Box   5 Folder   8	Radical Theatre Festival - Schedules, Financial Information, Correspondence, Contract, Pamphlet, November-December 1968
Box   5 Folder   9	San Diego State College - Correspondence, Stage Manager's Report, July 1969-March 1970
Box   5 Folder   10	Song Book, Music, and Lyrics, undated