January 2008

Potrero Hill Resident Ron Davis Pursues a Life of Activist-Learning

By Emily Wilson

Director, actor, author, and gardener Ron Davis has lived in Potrero Hill for nearly four decades; ever since the rent on his North Beach apartment doubled, from $65 to $130, and he went searching for a cheaper place to live.

Influenced by Bertolt Brecht, the German poet, playwright and director, Davis founded the legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1965. Davis, like Brecht, believed theater was a way to change society. “It was a reaction against capitalism,” he said about the Mime Troupe. “We were Marxists without a party.”

A half-decade after he started it Davis left the Mime Troupe. “It didn’t have any place to go,” he said. “Americans have no idea how to organize anything over the long-term. We didn’t have any theory and we needed some.”

For the past 20 years Davis has been involved with various neighborhood groups, including the now defunct Potrero Commons, which in the early 1990s tried to stop development of the Victoria Mews, located at 18th and Arkansas streets. He’s taught at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and New York University. And he’s continually pursuing formal education, obtaining a masters in theater from Humboldt State in 1995, and another in Ecology from SFSU in 2004. In between, in 2001, Davis spent six months living in a tent while earning his master gardener certificate from the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz Farm and Garden Program.

Longtime friend Paul Kleyman, editor of Aging Today, the Newspaper of the American Society on Aging, met Davis in the 1960s when Kleyman was a draft resister assigned to work at Glide Memorial Church. Davis visited the church to attend meetings and workshops.

Kleyman enjoys Davis’ creativity and intellectual wanderlust. “He’s a remarkable person with unflagging vitality,” Kleyman said. “He is constantly seeking alternatives or new knowledge that will lead to new ways of living and doing things. I just marvel at him.”

Davis said his focus has increasingly shifted to ecology. To consume less, he said, is a radical act. “If you really want to undermine capitalism, become an ecologist,” he said. “They are much more progressive.”

Currently Davis is combining his interests in ecology, politics and theater as part of a doctoral dissertation he’s pursuing at UC Davis’ Theater and Dance Department entitled “The End of Political Theatre in the Age of Empire, Mime, Gestus, Non-Verbal Communication and Brecht, plus Ecological Aesthetics, the Way to Go”.

The dissertation will use Davis’ knowledge about political theater to explore Brecht, the history of the San Francisco Mime Troupe with a parallel London group, Joint Stock, and to examine what an ecological aesthetic could be, says Larry Bogad, Davis’ thesis advisor. “He’s really pioneering this idea of ecological aesthetics and what that would look like and moving it forward it into the world,” Bogad said.

Bogad said he first heard the term, “ecological aesthetic” from Davis. One example is the “paper movies” Davis creates, in which he uses drawings on a scroll turned by a crank, accompanied by actors, to explain organic farming. Davis presents the movies, which are about 15 minutes long, at local farmers’ markets.

“Most people who are organic consumers don’t understand how farming works,” Davis said. “We are trying to deepen their understanding of what it means to be ecological. If we don’t go organic, we’re simply going to kill people with pesticides. It’s a serious thing.”

Davis may have serious beliefs, but Kleyman says there’s a lighter side to him as well. “You know, with all of that intense political discussion, he has a marvelous sense of humor,” Kleyman said. “Every time I leave his company I’m engaged and in good humor.”

January 2008

Potrero Hill Resident Ron Davis Pursues a Life of Activist-Learning

By Emily Wilson

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