August 12, 1965 — the second-stage Gate Theatre run of A Minstrel Show, or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel, the San Francisco Mime Troupe's most controversial production of its first decade, performed five days after R. G. Davis's arrest by SFPD in Lafayette Park during a Mime Troupe production of Il Candelaio. The Sausalito date is one of four nights in early August (per the Wolfgang's postcard archive entry GTS650812-PC), reprising at the Gate Theatre what had originally been a July 1-25 run at the same venue. The handbill for the original run is plate 2.33 in Paul Grushkin's "The Art of Rock" — the catalog AOR-2.33 — and is one of the earliest items in the canon to credit a "Bill Graham" promotion, though the August postcard reprise in the AOR collection is the artifact our chronicle is built around.

A Minstrel Show was the Mime Troupe's frontal assault on American racial liberalism. Written by Saul Landau and the Troupe's R. G. Davis (and credited in some sources to Gary Davis as well), with music composed and performed by Steve Reich during what would become a two-season collaboration, the production used the literal vaudeville-era minstrel form — burnt cork on white actors — to mock white audiences' presumed comfort with stereotypes when delivered by Black performers. The piece was vicious, cathartic, and very specifically of summer 1965: the Voting Rights Act had been signed by LBJ on August 6, six days before this performance; the Watts uprising would begin in Los Angeles the night of August 11, and was still going on when the Mime Troupe took the stage in Sausalito on August 12. The piece interrogated whether civil-rights legislation could touch the deeper structures of American racial fantasy — a question whose timeliness, that night, was difficult to overstate.

The Mime Troupe was operating under direct legal pressure when this performance happened. On August 4, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Commission had convened a special meeting at McLaren Lodge in Golden Gate Park to review the Troupe's permit, citing "indecent, offensive and obscene language and gestures" in their park performances of Il Candelaio (per the FoundSF account drawn from period coverage). On August 7, Davis was arrested in Lafayette Park during the Troupe's fourth performance of Il Candelaio, charged with performing without a park permit, booked at the Hall of Justice, and released on $56 bail two hours later. The August 12 Gate Theatre night fell into that interval — the Troupe defending its licenses, raising legal funds, and performing nightly in spite of city pressure. The Mime Troupe would win the subsequent lawsuit, establishing the right of artists to perform uncensored in San Francisco city parks (per FoundSF and the Wikipedia article on the Troupe).

Bill Graham was the Troupe's business manager in 1965 (the start year is variously given as 1964 or 1965 in different chronologies), the role from which he transitioned into rock promotion. His name on AOR-2.33 is one of the earliest "Bill Graham presents" credits in the SF poster catalog (per PosterCentral and the auction record). The legal-defense fund Graham would launch in November 1965 as Mime Troupe Appeal I (Nov 6 at the Howard Street studio, ~$2,000 raised) and December 1965 as Appeal II (Dec 10 at the Fillmore Auditorium) emerged out of these summer arrests. AOR-2.33 in August was the production whose legal jeopardy created the conditions for Graham's first Fillmore booking. Without R. G. Davis's arrest week, there is no Appeal I; without Appeal I, there is no Bill Graham as full-time promoter; without Bill Graham as full-time promoter, the SF rock scene we now read about looks materially different.

The Gate Theatre itself was a small Sausalito venue across the bay — population center under 6,000 in 1965, a converted warehouse-era waterfront town that had been the Mime Troupe's regular Marin venue throughout the year. The choice of a Sausalito reprise for an inflammatory racial-satire piece was practical (no SF park permit drama) and political (taking it across county lines under a different jurisdiction). The audience, by Mime Troupe accounts of the era, would have been a mix of beat-era Marin residents, San Francisco theater followers, and political left activists — proto-counterculture, one summer ahead of the dance-hall scene that would emerge at Longshoreman's Hall two months later.

The handbill catalogued as AOR-2.33 itself is unattributed — designer unknown, no credit on the sheet. 8.5 x 11 inches on thin flat stock, plain typesetting, no psychedelic visuals (which were not yet a SF design vocabulary in summer 1965). It is a pre-poster object, important for what comes after it: when Graham hired Wes Wilson for Appeal I in November, the visual grammar of the Bay Area scene would shift in months from this Mime Troupe handbill register into the Wilson lettering that defined 1966.

Source: Wolfgang's Vault GTS650812-PC postcard entry, concertposterauction.com AOR-2.33 handbill listing, rockposters.com AOR 2.32 / SF Mime Troupe collection page, Wikipedia San Francisco Mime Troupe, FoundSF "San Francisco Mime Troupe Arrested" entry, PosterCentral "Earliest 'Bill Graham Presents' Posters" article, billgrahamfoundation.org SF Mime Troupe performer page.