2018: Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical

Written by Rotimi Agbabiaka with Joan Holden
Music & Lyrics by Ira Marlowe
Directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe

SEEING RED features Mime Troupe veterans Lisa Hori-Garcia, Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Michael Gene Sullivan, as well as Andre Amarotico

And band members Patrick Byers, Andrew Niven and Daniel Savio


View original playbill

View the full company's bios

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View YouTube Trailer

View show interview with Mr. Wa

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Song Clip: It's Not That Simple 0:32           
Michael Gene Sullivan,
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro
 Song Clip: Seeing Red 0:38    
Michael Gene Sullivan,
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro,
Andre Amarotico


Poster
Poster Design: R. Black


It's Election Night 2018 and Bob swears she'll never vote again. A lifetime of fading fortunes made this former Obama voter take a chance on the new guy promising change-Donald J. Trump. But it's two years into his presidency and Bob's still waiting to start winning. Tonight she's telling everyone in her small-town bar that all politicians are liars, the system is rigged, and nothing's ever gonna change.

Along comes a mysterious stranger with an intriguing offer. He'll show her an America where working people come together to demand a brighter future, where socialism isn't a dirty word. He'll take her all the way ... to 1912.

Bob soon finds herself traveling back to a time when the Socialist Party was winning millions of American votes; uncovering a hidden history and realizing that she may have more in common with those pesky progressives on the coasts. She begins to ask: what will it take to get people to stop voting against their interests? How do we overcome the divide-and-conquer tactics that keep us all down? When did our electoral choices get so limited? And isn't it time to get off the swinging pendulum that's left us at our current impasse?


 Production Photo
Photographer: Mike@mikemelnyk.com
- Pow! -
(l-r) Lisa Hori Garcia (Bob), Andre Amarotico (Magarack) in
Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical.


Reviews and Articles:

"But in 2018, the choir isn't complacent anymore, and the preaching isn't truism. If we've learned anything, it's that we can take nothing - no liberal value, no basic human decency - for granted. Turns out the Mime Troupe, having painted Trumpism as a national emergency since before it was Trumpism, was right all along.... 'Seeing Red' insists that disparate lefty causes are in fact one and the same, from workers owning the means of production to suffrage to anti-lynching to world peace to immigrants' and veterans' rights.... Before her psychedelic time travel, Bob hadn't known her history as a soldier and a worker. That new consciousness has lit a fuse. She crackles. Her words have voltage. The Mime Troupe's spare, small stage feels a little dangerous, as if Hori-Garcia might leap off it and start rousing her audiences from their picnic blankets."
San Francisco Chronicle - 7/5/18

"it's a rollicking show that offers a faint ray of hope in a troubled time. It serves as a welcome reminder that the realm of political possibility in this country hasn't always been as limited as we've been led to believe it is today, and that there's no reason it has to be."
Marinij.com - 8/22/18

"'Seeing Red' demonstrates that better understanding of history/herstory can close the chasm [between liberals and Trump voters]. 'Seeing Red' reminds us that when we are united, we can make change happen."
theatrius.com - 7/9/18

KPFA interview: Michael Gene Sullivan about Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical.

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