AN OCTOROON, THE UPSTAIRS CONCIERGE Among Mixed Blood Theatre's 2015-16 Season

Mixed Blood Theatre has inhabited the historic firehouse on the West Bank for 40 years and is celebrating its anniversary with the first phase of a major venue renovation, a revitalized commitment to its West Bank community, and an ambitious season of new work!

With undivided attention to access, preservation, and conservation, the 1887 former Minneapolis fire station that has been home to Mixed Blood since 1976 will have three times the number of bathrooms, a spacious event center/lobby, elevators and lifts, energy efficiency, and much more. Aiming to be the theatrical destination for audiences and artists with disabilities, the place of assembly for the residents and artists of Cedar Riverside, and a cultural temple for new work and racial equity boasting the highest professional standards in the land, Mixed Blood's new space -- designed by architects Ralph and Toby Rapson -- will evolve into a gem of a venue.

All 2015/2016 mainstage offerings are substantive- in scope of content, artistry, cast size, theatrical ambition, and societal aspirations. Next season will be one of big ideas at Mixed Blood, from the daring racial politics of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' AN OCTOROON to the wide swath of bold new Latino voices making up DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY to the hilarious social commentary of Kristoffer Diaz's THE UPSTAIRS CONCIERGE, Mixed Blood Theatre's 40th Anniversary season, dubbed WD40, serves as a vibrant reminder of why this theatre thrives "at the intersection of virtuosity & social change."

Artistic Director Jack Reuler: "From the first meeting with legendary architect Ralph Rapson, it has taken 20 years to begin the transformation of a glorious former fire station into a spectacular contemporary theatre and event center. Always a reconfigurable space, the relationship between performance and observer will be even more capricious, cementing a Mixed Blood core value to remain predictably unpredictable. And 2015-16's shows will take advantage of that potential, forcing you to think and respond in ever-changing ways to a brand of theatre that progressively shifts away from conventions of the past. The writers, directors, designers, and actors promise to challenge, provoke, and dazzle."

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Mixed Blood Theatre Company's 40th Anniversary Season: WD40

AN OCTOROON

By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Directed by Nataki Garrett

October 16 - November 15, 2015

AN OCTOROON, which the New York Times proclaimed to be "this decade's most eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today," is a shrewdly awkward riff on Irish playwright Dion Boucicault's "The Octoroon," a 19th-century melodrama about illicit interracial love. From playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, described by the New York Times as one of "this country's most original and illuminating writers about race," comes this funny, disturbing, whirlwind of a play about the antebellum South as well as our present-day American selves, a play about the complexity of American identities and their unresolvable connection to our legacy of slavery and genocide. It is a full-blooded investigation of race and cultural politics, yet so energetic, funny, and entertainingly demented, you can't look away. As with his other unorthodox, highly stylized plays on incendiary topics (such as NEIGHBORS, which opened Mixed Blood's 2011-12 season), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins reminds us that race is less a matter of what we can see and more a question of how we ask to be seen.

Special Festival Event: CEDAR CYPHER

November 27-28, 2015

Cedar Cypher is a two-day event that will showcase dozens of emerging and established artists from Cedar Riverside - musicians, dancers, performers, visual artists, spoken word artists, poets, actors, playwrights, sculptors, and more - in Mixed Blood's newly-remodeled facility. This community building winter festival will feature performances, panel discussions, arts exhibits, documentary screenings, and a closing celebration by, for, and with the Somali and East African Americans of the West Bank community.

DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY

Comprised of commissioned works by Junot Díaz, Kristoffer Diaz, Michael John Garcés, Vicki Grise, Maria Isa, Melinda Lopez, Marcela Lorca, Joe Minjares, Kyoung H. Park, Sean San José, Tanya Saracho, and Octavio Solis.

Directed by Mark Valdez

March 4-27, 2016

Playwrights, choreographers, DJs, composers, novelists, and comedians - Dominican, Cuban, Mexican, Chilean, Colombian, Chicano, Nuyorican, and Sotarican - have been commissioned and will be sculpted by director/dramaturg Mark Valdez into DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY with a design team headed by Efren Delgadillo. Culminating 25 years of continuously producing Latino work and celebrating the naissance of a new Latino theatre movement, DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY is a theatrical extravaganza collage of 15 generative artists woven together to present a collection of voices that reveal a contemporary snapshot of Latinidad. DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY is both an invitation for dialogue and a consideration of Latino stories as Latinos want them told. Mixed Blood's reconfigurable former firehouse space will be gutted to open its doors to a curated event in which the lines between participants and audiences become blurred. From controversial issues to stories that are often overlooked to the simple-but-extraordinary events that make up a life, DJ LATINIDAD'S LATINO DANCE PARTY is more dance party than play.

THE UPSTAIRS CONCIERGE

By Kristoffer Diaz

Directed by Jack Reuler

April 15 - May 8, 2016

Pulitzer-finalist and Obie winner Kristoffer Diaz (THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, which premiered at Mixed Blood in 2010) takes on America's toxic obsession with status and celebrity in a modern-day door-slamming farce that declares "no privacy is the new privacy." THE UPSTAIRS CONCIERGE follows a concierge, Ella Elizondo, in a swanky new hotel catering to VIPs, propelled by the impending arrival of Rebecca Oaxaca, an online sensation who was filmed bunting a baseball on a beach in a bikini. A cultural blizzard of baseball scouts, paparazzi bloggers, gothic romance novelists, the hotel owners, bellmen, and "the upstairs concierge" run wild through six slamming doors to court, outsmart, and be undermined. It's a screwball comedy with one wrong move and miscommunication after another. From Molière to the Marx Brothers to Diaz, writers of farce have gone all-out with over-the-top antics and improbable scenarios to deflate pretensions, speak truth to power, and give everyday foibles a good what-for. About his own work, Diaz says it "exists in the intersection of many cultural traditions, from European drama to Golden Era hip-hop, from the rich history of Latino playwrights in the United States to Jewish comedians from the Catskills. I embrace all of them, and make art that lives somewhere in the middle."

In addition, Mixed Blood's Alan Page Auditorium will act as home for other great work by Twin Cities theatres:

Minnesota Fringe Festival: 83 performances of 11 productions in 10 days; July 30 - August 9, 2015

Mu Performing Arts: Purple Cloud by Jessica Huang; December 4-20, 2015

St. Paul Conservatory of Performing Arts: TBD; January 23-24, 2016

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All performances take place in the Alan Page Auditorium in Mixed Blood's historic firehouse theatre, reconfigured to three different relationships between audiences and artists throughout the season. Admission for individual shows can be obtained in two ways: 1) Through Radical Hospitality (now entering its fifth season), admission is FREE on a first come/first served basis starting two hours before every show, or 2) Advanced reservations are available online or by phone for $20 per person (beginning Aug 1, 2015). All performances are captioned with projected supertitles. Patrons with disabilities are eligible for free advanced reservations and free transportation to and from the theatre.

Memberships and Advanced Reservations are on sale now at www.mixedblood.com or 612-338-6131.

Mixed Blood Theatre invites the global village into its audience and onto its stage for provocative and virtuosic theater. By providing free admission through Radical Hospitality, the company is revolutionizing access and building a truly inclusive audience in its historic firehouse theater in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The award-winning Mixed Blood also tours regionally and creates customized productions for the workplace.

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