Despite its name, the group does not perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of commedia dell'arte, melodrama, and broad farce with topical political themes.

[1] By 1961, the group transitioned to the commedia dell'arte format to more thoroughly comment on perceived political repression in the United States, the growing civil rights movement and military and covert intervention abroad.

[5] In 1967, a benefit called "Appeal IV" featured the bands the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Moby Grape.

[6] They also traveled to Canada and played at Simon Fraser University in 1966 with A Minstrel Show or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel by Gary Davis and Saul Landau.

[22] Red State, the troupe's 2008 fable about a small Midwest town that, after years of being ignored, demands accountability for their tax dollars, was nominated for a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best New Script, as was their 2009 production, Too Big to Fail, which detailed how credit and the philosophy of profit at all costs trap mesmerized citizens in a cycle of debt, while endlessly enriching the capitalists who cast the spell.