Mugwumpin to Premiere BLOCKBUSTER SEASON This Fall

San Francisco's adventurous, award-winning theater ensemble Mugwumpin is pleased to announce the world premiere of Blockbuster Season, a comic critique of the Hollywood disaster film genre. Created and performed by Mugwumpin founders Joe Estlack and Christopher White, Blockbuster Season is a co-production with Intersection for the Arts, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The play opens in previews on Friday, September 25 and runs for three weeks through Sunday, October 18.

Blockbuster Season leads audiences on a perilous tour through the billion-dollar disaster flick industry. Giant asteroids, nuclear Armageddon, alien invasions are just a few of the more spectacular ways human civilization may come to an end, and Hollywood has made a specialty of serving up variants of the same stories and characters again and again: the panicked masses of humanity in disarray and the high testosterone heroes who save them with a mix of chutzpah, high-ammunition artillery and mano a mano combat.

Mugwumpin dramatizes these familiar clichés with a critical eye aimed at exposing their darker implications and real-world cognates. New York Mayor Rudolf Guiuliani after 9/11 and George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina are each conjured over the course of a play that offers an alternative ending to the classic disaster flick narrative. Does survival depend more on competition or cooperation? Blockbuster Season suggests a way out of the fiery explosion that doesn't involve a commanding leader or superhero.

Estlack, together with White one of the three original founders of Mugwumpin, returns to the company after leading roles in Jerusalem, Promises, Promises and Stupid f-ing Bird at SF Playhouse; The Lyons at Aurora Theatre; and Bonnie and Clyde at Shotgun Players. White returns to the stage after leading the company through its tenth anniversary season featuring revivals ofThis is All I Need and Super:Anti:Reluctant; a series of theater salons, workshops and symposia; and the company's first performance installation, titled Luster, at the Asian Art Museum. Other recent credits of White's include Campo Santo's The River, Shotgun Player's Our Town and the neo-noir The Other Barrio, featured in the 2015 SF Independent Film Festival.

A live camera operator will perform an additional role in the play, both recording and at times intervening in the action.

Blockbuster Season is directed by Susannah Martin with sound design by Theodore Hulsker, scenic design by Sean Riley, lighting design by Ray Oppenheimer, video projections by Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky and costume design by Ashley Holvick. Mariana Olvera serves as producer. Additional members of the production team include Katherine Bickford, Natalie Greene, Michelle Talgarow and Sienna Williams.

Tickets for Blockbuster Season range from $25 to $35, and may be purchased online at blockbusterseason.eventbrite.com or by calling Intersection for the Arts at (415) 626-2787. The previews on September 25 - 26 are pay-what-you-can.

Mugwumpin is a member of Intersection CORE, a program of Intersection for the Arts providing fiscal sponsorship, incubation and consulting services to artists. Blockbuster Season is funded in part by generous donations from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

Mugwumpin is an award-winning San Francisco theater and performance company, part of a wave of young American companies who are expanding the art form by questioning the primacy of text and narrative in theater and playfully transgressing received notions of the audience-performer relationship. Since its founding, Mugwumpin has created 13 evening-length productions and many smaller performances, all of which premiered in the Bay Area. Mugwumpin's first show, Rabbit Causes Dog, was named Best Play at the 2004 SF Fringe Festival. In 2008, Mugwumpin thrilled international audiences at the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre with its original work Super:Anti:Reluctant. In 2010, This Is All I Need played to packed houses and universal critical acclaim in San Francisco. It was named Best Play by both SF Weekly and the San Francisco Bay Guardian before embarking upon a successful European tour in 2011. And their most recent productions, Future Motive Power and The Great Big Also, have reaped sold-out houses and critical praise for their "provocative images and ideas" and their "urgent call for us to question our ideals and associations and to cultivate that other, neglected American quality: staunch individualism" (Lily Janiak, HowlRound). For more information, visit Mugwumpin.org.

For 50 years Intersection for the Arts has played a unique role in the development of the Bay Area's rich, innovative and diverse arts ecosystem by connecting people and communities across physical, social, cultural, and economic boundaries to instigate change. Through a platform of resources -- fiscal sponsorship, incubation, professional development, technical assistance, community gatherings, artist's residencies, exhibitions, and live performance -- Intersection fosters the advancement of the Bay Area arts community by creating sustainable models for artists and arts organizations that are critical in a rapidly changing world. Intersection's Artists Resources/Incubator Programs provide assistance to more than 120 artists and arts organizations to support the growth of their practices, the development of sustainable livelihoods and the realization of their work.

Photo: Pak Han