[An audio clip from the film Les
Diggers de San Francisco]
This two-minute clip opens with Peter reading from Trip Without A Ticket then
discussing the concepts of life acting and "Create the Condition You
Describe".
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Transcription of Peter's comments. (I had asked if anyone would be
interested in transcribing this clip, and lo the same day within a few
hours, one of the Digger angels sent me the following:)
[Reading an excerpt from Trip Without A Ticket:]
"The Diggers are hip to property. Everything is free, do your own
thing. Human beings are the means of exchange. Food, machines, clothing,
materials, shelter and props are simply there. Stuff. A perfect dispenser
would be an open Automat on the street. Locks are time-consuming.
Combinations are clocks.
"So a store of goods or clinic or restaurant that is free becomes
a social art form. Ticketless theater. Out of money and control.
"Diggers assume free stores to liberate human nature. First free
the space, goods and services. Let theories of economics follow social
facts. Once a free store is assumed, human wanting and giving, needing and
taking, become wide open to improvisation.
"A sign: If Someone Asks to See the Manager Tell Him He's the
Manager.
[...]
"A basket labeled Free Money.
"No owner, no Manager, no employees and no cash-register. A
salesman in a free store is a life-actor.
[End of reading from excerpt.]
"And it hit me…thclik, oiiiinnnggggg [strikes
forehead]...you know, this is life acting...is you create the condition you describe, and if
we’re lucky, the condition lasts for a long time. And if it isn’t,
well at least we tried. And there were people that didn’t get it. I mean
there were people that you would give Free Money to, and they wouldn’t
get it. Or sometimes social critics said we were Robin
Hoods, that we were taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That
isn’t what we were doing. I mean we got things from all sorts of
sources, and that was 'magical'. But, what we did with it, was to
create a theatre that described everything being Free, hoping
that that would lead to a social movement."
Peter in the 1998 interview by Celine Deransart and Alice Gaillard for the
film Les Diggers de San Francisco.
Peter in a theatre workshop at the San Francisco Mime Troupe studio in
1966. He wrote and acted in many of the Troupe productions from 1965 to
1967. In October, 1966, he wrote Trip Without A Ticket,
published as an anonymous Digger manifesto.
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Last updated
July 22, 2010
Home page located at: http://www.diggers.org
