theater absurd

Diggers (theater)

The Diggers were a radical community-action group of Improv actors operating from 1966-68, based in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Their politics were such that they have sometimes been categorized as "left-wing." More accurately, they were "community anarchists" who blended a desire for freedom with a consciousness of the community in which they lived. They were closely associated with and shared a number of members with a guerilla theater group named the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

Origins

The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. During the mid and late 1960s, the San Francisco Diggers opened stores which simply gave away their stock; provided free food, medical care, transport and temporary housing; they also organized free music concerts and works of political art. Some of their happenings included the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.

The group was founded by Emmett Grogan, Peter Coyote, Peter Berg, and other members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe including Billy Murcott, La Mortadella, and Butcher Brooks.

Activities

The group sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism. The Diggers provided a free food service in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park in Haight-Ashbury every day at 4 p.m., generally feeding over 200 people who had no other source of food. They served a stew made from donated and stolen meat and vegetables behind a giant yellow picture frame, called the Free Frame of Reference. On one occasion, at a free concert in the park, people who came for the food were given a two-inch-by-two-inch frame to hang about their necks, called the portable Free Frame of Reference. The Diggers also popularized whole-wheat bread with their Digger Bread, baked in coffee cans at the Free Bakery. In cooperation with an office and kitchen of the Episcopal All Saints Church on 1350 Waller Street, they arranged free “crashpads” for homeless youth drawn to the Haight-Ashbury area.

They opened numerous Free Stores in Haight-Ashbury, in which all items were free for the taking or giving. The stores offered items that had been discarded but were still in usable condition. The first free store, in a six-car garage on Page Street that they found filled with empty frames that they tacked up on the side of the building, was called the Free Frame of Reference and was later superseded by the Trip Without a Ticket on Frederick Street. It was unclear how the stores were funded. The 1% Free poster, showing two Chinese Tong assassins under the Chinese character for revolution, was thought to be demanding a 1% tithe from merchants, but that was not the case. The poster was a challenge, implicitly suggesting that 'free' people were the minority, and inciting others to step up. They also opened a Free Medical Clinic, initially by inviting volunteers from the University of California, San Francisco medical school up the hill from the neighborhood.

They threw free parties with music provided by the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and other bands. They also staged street theater events, such as driving a truck of semi-naked belly dancers through the Financial District, inviting brokers to climb on board and forget their work. In October 1967, they staged The Death of Hippie, a parade in the Haight-Ashbury where masked participants carried a coffin with the words "Hippie--Son of Media" on the side. The event was staged in such a way so that any media that simply described it would be transmitting the Digger message that Hippies were a media invention. This was called "creating the condition you describe" and was used skillfully by the Diggers to control the media. Their own publications, notably the Digger Papers, are the origin of such phrases as "Do your own thing" and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life". The Diggers fostered and inspired later groups like the Yippies.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Diggers did not "fall apart," but evolved into the larger and more complex Free Family. While the Free Food and Medical Clinics were responses to necessary conditions caused by the enormous influx of young people during the heyday of the hippie scene; conditions that the San Francisco government was ignoring, the central Digger tenet was to be "authentic." Running soup kitchens and medical clinics was not the authentic, long-term concern of the Digger founders. After passing those institutions onto a local Church and Dr. David Smith to continue, the Diggers moved out of the City, created various land bases in Forest Knolls, Olema, Covelo, Salmon River, Trinidad, and Black Bear California. In those places they integrated with other groups: The Free Bakery, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, the Gypsy Truckers and created The Free Family. That larger group still exists informally, and many of the Digger children and grandchildren remain close and in contact with one another, and many (children included) are still involved with progressive causes.

References

Books

Coyote, Peter. Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle 1998 ISBN 1-58243-011-X
Grogan, Emmett. Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps 1990
Martin, Bradford D. The Theater is in the Street 2004 ISBN 1-55849-458-8
Perry, Charles. The Haight-Ashbury: A History, Random House/Rolling Stone Press, New York, 1984
Sinclair, Mick. San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History Signal Books Limited, Oxford, UK 2004
Torgoff, Martin. Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age 1945-2000 2004 ISBN 0-7432-3010-8