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The Consortium exists to:

 

  • Support artistic-cross fertilization among Bay Area ensembles.

  • Encourage ensembles to share resources and skills, both artistic and business-related.

  • Advocate for increased legitimacy, visibility, and recognition for the form of Ensemble performance in the Bay Area and beyond, and for increased leverage in dealing with other institutions.

 

The consortium currently holds two major events per year--the ensemble auditions (in both Oakland and San Francisco) and the Design Slam. Details can be found on our events page.

 

The consortium is conceived as a loose structure where individuals and companies get as much out of it as they put in, therefore, all meetings are open to anyone interested. 

 

Consortium Companies: 

Mugwumpin

Ragged Wing Ensemble

foolsFURY

Theatre of Yugen

Mojo Theatre

Inferno Theatre

 

About the Companies: 

 

Mugwumpin

Mugwumpin is a San Francisco-based ensemble that devises collective live art.  We celebrate and shine a light on subjective experience, with a focus on questions, not answers.  By recognizing our own and others’ autonomy, we navigate the space in between each other and thereby develop empathy and sensitivity within and beyond our ensemble.  Our collaborative process of making art is reflected in the public’s experience of the work, and ripples outward from there. We value impactful sensory experiences, artistic risk, physicality, playfulness and precision.

 

Mugwumpin was formed in San Francisco in 2004 by Joseph Estlack, Denmo Ibrahim, and Christopher W. White, with the aim of reinvigorating live performance as a communal event. Mugwumpin, currently directed by White, is among a new generation of American companies interested in creating relational, experiential work that questions the primacy of text and narrative in theater.

 

Theatre of Yugen

Theatre of Yugen is an experimental theatre company dedicated to the pursuit of the intangible essence of yugen, a Japanese artistic notion which describes a state of inner beauty and vibrancy perceived with all the senses. 

 

Mojo Theatre

aims to tackle the important and pressing issues of our time with--in the words of Peter Brook--both "lightheartedness" and "rebellion." We strive to foster a passionate dialogue about the human condition as we enter this vital transition era. Blending modern media, music, and other art forms with heightened performance styles and texts, our goal is to create a vibrant sociopolitical fusion that both entertains and challenges our audiences--and ourselves.

 

Founded in 2010 in San Francisco, in 2012 the Mojo Theatre moved into its current space in the historic Redstone Building in the Mission District. The company currently stages two kinds of performances, our Epic Mainstage shows (text-based) and our Thematic Cabarets. We offer classes and workshops in acting, playwriting, solo performance, and more.  

 

Read more about our philosophy in our MojoFesto

 

Ragged Wing Ensemble

The Ragged Wing Ensemble is based in our downtown Oakland venue, The Flight Deck. There, we run an annual mainstage show, an outdoor show, a series of original, short plays, a multi-media gallery show, a youth ensemble for high school students, workshops for adults, and a professional apprenticeship program.

 

 

We believe in the practice of true ensemble (collaborative art-making). Often, composition exercises for building an effective ensemble are combined with building the content of our performances and art.


Our mission is to catalyze a deep cultural shift where artistic action is at the center of vital social change. We aim to connect artists and audiences through the ritual of live performance, exploring universal questions that span the ancient and contemporary. We engage in the study and practice of Ensemble, collaboratively creating new, interdisciplinary works and activating the next generation of artistically engaged citizens.

 

foolsFURY

The mission of foolsFURY Theater Company is to revitalize the American theater by:

  • Creating ground-breaking visceral performances that inspire audiences and artists to                                                       reconsider and reconnect with the world around them,

  • Emphasizing qualities of the theater that can only be experienced live, and

  • Advancing artistic dialogue through training, research and presentation.

 

We are also the producers of the FURY Factory festival of ensemble theater, a biennial gathering of performing artists from around the Bay Area and the world. Since its inception in 2005, FURY Factory has become one of San Francisco’s most exciting cultural events, a vibrant accessible home for audiences and artists to experience compelling new works by over 70 innovative risk-taking companies from around the country, and as far away as Afghanistan and the UK.

 

Bandelion

Bandelion is Eric Kupers’ ensemble within Dandelion Dancetheater. Bandelion was born in 2006 when Kupers called together dance, music and theater artists to spend a year of intensive interdisciplinary investigation, which culminated in the evening-length work Drop. We are a tribe. We are a found family. We are committed to pushing and being pushed by each other, past familiar edges.

 

We are: Rodney Bell, Chris Evans, Chris Gallegos, Dawn Frank Holtan, Reese Johnson, Eric Kupers, Keith Penney, Anne-Lise Reusswig, Belgica Rodriguez, and Frances Sedayao.

 

Bandelion collaborates. We are inspired by Physically Integrated Dance, in which people with and without disabilities figure out how to move together, create together, and set up accessible structures for performance. We each come with unique skills & unique difficulties, & we communicate rigorously so that we can effectively train, support each other, & create art we’re all invested in. We want the unexpected. We want to connect. We want to grow with the communities we touch.

 

Consortium Membership:

 

Membership in the consortium can be fluid, but a certain level of commitment from members is expected in order to have a seat on the Governance Committee.  Members of the Governance Committee are self-selecting; any consortium member can be a member of the Governance Committee so long as he/she/they are able and willing to commit to the requirements.  A seat can be held by either an individual or an ensemble.  Decision-making will happen in a consensus style among members of the Governance Committee.

 

Current Governance Committee:

Mugwumpin

Ragged Wing Ensemble

foolsFURY

Mojo Theatre

 

A seat on the governance committee requires:

·      Attendance at each consortium meeting

·      A commitment to doing work for the consortium in between meetings

·      A willingness and intention to share/exchange resources/skills with other members of the consortium

 

 

 

 

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