Diggers (theater)
Encyclopedia
The Diggers were a radical community-action group of activists and 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 guerrilla theater group named
the San Francisco Mime Troupe
.
Actor Peter Coyote
was a founding member of the Diggers.
s 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 (later director of Planet Drum), and other members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe
including Billy Murcott, Roberto La Morticella, and Brooks Bucher.
. 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. They served a stew made from donated 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 the basement of Episcopal All Saints Church on 1350 Waller Street. In cooperation with All Saints Church and later via the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1830 Fell 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with empty frames that they tacked up on the side of the building, was called the Free Frame of Reference and was later superseded by the Trip Without a Ticket on Frederick Street.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 on to a local Church and Dr. David Smith to continue, the Diggers moved out of the City, creating 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
, and the Gypsy Truckers, creating 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.
Various alternative communities like those the Diggers founded were covered in a documentary film made by Will Vinton
, who later went on to fame for his ClayMation clay-animation studio in Portland, Oregon, His 1970-ish documentary feature-length film was titled "Gone for A Better Deal", which, so far, has never been released to any video format.
Haight-Ashbury Golden-Gate park poet Ashleigh Brilliant
, later known for his series of epigrams on cards and in books called "pot-Shots", has recently released a CD of his songs, parodies of old movie and show tunes about "life in the Haight". The album includes two songs about The Diggers.
the San Francisco Mime Troupe
San Francisco Mime Troupe
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theatre of political satire which performs free shows in various parks in the San Francisco Bay Area and around California. The Troupe does not, however, perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of Commedia...
.
Actor Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote is an American actor, author, director, screenwriter and narrator of films, theatre, television and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Apple's iPad campaign. He has also served as on-camera co-host of the 2000 Oscar...
was a founding member of the Diggers.
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 happeningHappening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
s included the Death of Money Parade, Intersection Game, Invisible Circus, and Death of Hippie/Birth of Free.
The group was founded by Emmett Grogan
Emmett Grogan
Emmett Grogan was a founder of the Diggers, a radical community-action group of Improv actors in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California...
, Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote is an American actor, author, director, screenwriter and narrator of films, theatre, television and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Apple's iPad campaign. He has also served as on-camera co-host of the 2000 Oscar...
, Peter Berg (later director of Planet Drum), and other members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe
San Francisco Mime Troupe
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theatre of political satire which performs free shows in various parks in the San Francisco Bay Area and around California. The Troupe does not, however, perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of Commedia...
including Billy Murcott, Roberto La Morticella, and Brooks Bucher.
Activities
The group sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. The Diggers provided a free food service in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20% larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles long east to west, and about half a...
in Haight-Ashbury every day at 4 p.m., generally feeding over 200 people. They served a stew made from donated 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
Whole wheat bread
Whole wheat bread is a type of bread that is made using flour which is partly or entirely made from whole or almost whole wheat grains, see whole wheat flour and whole grain. It is one kind of brown bread. Synonyms or near-synonyms for whole wheat bread elsewhere in the world are whole grain bread...
with their Digger Bread, baked in coffee cans at the Free Bakery in the basement of Episcopal All Saints Church on 1350 Waller Street. In cooperation with All Saints Church and later via the Haight Ashbury Switchboard at 1830 Fell 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
Tong (organization)
The word tong means "hall" or "gathering place". In North America a tong is a type of organization found among Chinese living in the United States and Canada. These organizations are described as secret societies or sworn brotherhoods and are often tied to criminal activity...
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
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
, Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
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
The Digger Papers
The Digger Papers was a free collective publication of the Diggers, one of the sixties improvisational theatre groups in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district.-External links:*...
, 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 on to a local Church and Dr. David Smith to continue, the Diggers moved out of the City, creating 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
Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers
Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers was an anarchist affinity group based in New York City...
, and the Gypsy Truckers, creating 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.
Various alternative communities like those the Diggers founded were covered in a documentary film made by Will Vinton
Will Vinton
Will Vinton is an American director and producer of animated films. He was born in McMinnville, Oregon, near Portland. He has won an Oscar for his work, and several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for the work of his studio.- Education :...
, who later went on to fame for his ClayMation clay-animation studio in Portland, Oregon, His 1970-ish documentary feature-length film was titled "Gone for A Better Deal", which, so far, has never been released to any video format.
Haight-Ashbury Golden-Gate park poet Ashleigh Brilliant
Ashleigh Brilliant
Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant is an author and syndicated cartoonist living in Santa Barbara, California, USA. He is best known for his Pot-Shots, single-panel illustrations with one-line humorous remarks, which began syndication in the United States of America in 1975...
, later known for his series of epigrams on cards and in books called "pot-Shots", has recently released a CD of his songs, parodies of old movie and show tunes about "life in the Haight". The album includes two songs about The Diggers.
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