Toad the Mime was a character that I made famous in the late 1970’s San Francisco.  During this time a large picture of Toad’s face would greet a passerby and passing motorist on a freeway billboard. The cover was my face from San Francisco Magazine welcoming everyone to San Francisco.

I came from an old fifth generation San Francisco family.  My father was a violinist with the Orpheum Theatre, my mother a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. My brother was, and still is, a very talented Jazz musician. At the time, I was a working actress with the American Conservatory Theatre.  I was lucky enough to get into the original production of the musical “HAIR,” portraying the pregnant girl, Jeannie.

One day, I saw a story about a very pretty, male mime in Union Square.  His name was Robert Shields. Robert always likes to boast that he was the very first street mime, and perhaps he was.  All I know is that he inspired me to start working as a street artist. I worked solely in Ghiaredelli Square and the Cannery at Fisherman’s Wharf where stages were built for me.

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I was very young, and I wondered what to do next with my life. Everything seemed to me such an adventure, and I had just returned from traveling around the world on a Crystal Ship -- just like the Doors song.  The ship was a college called Chapman College Seven Seas.

I performed my first street mime show near the mountains in Nariobi, Africa dancing to the rhythm of a man playing a Zebra drum. Neither of us knew the others language, but movement and dance
made us family. Because of my dance he gave
me his drum.

I studied with some of the greatest mimes of the time: Jean Louis Barroult, Marcel Marceau, Carlos Mazzone, and my favorite mentor, the Japanese mime, Mamako Yoenyama. 

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