Company
Mugwumpin Company Members:
Natalie Greene, Artistic Director, is a multidisciplinary artist who has been performing, teaching, creating in the Bay Area since 2003. Work with Mugwumpin includes directing In Event of Moon Disaster, choreographing Blockbuster Season, as well as co-creating and performing in Future Motive Power, The Great Big Also, Luster, Asomnia, and other Occurrences. Her site-specific work for the company has been presented by San Francisco Airport, Children's Fairyland, Pro Arts Gallery and Intersection for the Arts. Natalie is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Performing Arts & Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, where for 10 years she directed the intergenerational performance company, Dance Generators. Through USF, Natalie leads international community programs in Latin America, one of which was the subject of her 2016 documentary, Siempre Más Alto. Locally, her choreographic work has been presented by California Academy of Sciences, Shotgun Players, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, and the Rotunda Series at City Hall. As a performer and collaborator, she has worked with Amie Dowling, Christopher Ward White, Deborah Slater, Emily Keeler, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Kelly Kemp, Kim Epifano, Krista DeNio, Leyya Tawil, Mary Armentrout and Susannah Martin. She is a veteran Artist-in-Residence with the San Francisco Arts Education Project, and a passionate advocate for socially-conscious arts education. Aside from Mugwumpin, her favorite form of performance is singing with her dad and brother in the family band, with her mom's delicious tacos and margaritas on the way.
El Beh is a theater artist, performer, musician, educator, mover and shaker with a degree in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. She has collaborated with Mugwumpin over the past few years in various capacities, from fundraising to performing, favorites including Occurrences Get This Go and Asomnia. She has also been lucky to play locally with the likes of Magic Theater, Shotgun Players, Cal Shakes, Z Space, detour dance, EmSpace Dance, SF Playhouse, Center Rep, Townhall Theatre, Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project, Pacific Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Playhouse, Cutting Ball Theater and Woman’s Will among others. As Mizz Ellemenohpee Q. Arestiuvee, she is a co-curator and host of Drag Spectacular Spectacular, a sporadic cabaret of drag curiosities at the Rite Spot. A happy Hawk and proud company member of detour dance, El can also be caught exposing babies to the glories of music making, creating weird, and sometimes not-so-weird, but mostly weird sounds on her cello, or grooving HARD on the dance floor.
Madeline HD Brown is a San Francisco based performer whose focus is creating and performing ensemble-devised theatre and has been Mugwumpin company member since 2009. With Mugwumpin: Performer: The Great Big Also, This Is All I Need, Get This Go & The Search Party, Conceived/Performer: I Have This _______ [Possessional Confessional], AD: Future Motive Power. She has performed locally with Aurora Theatre, Brava Theater, CenterREP, Cutting Ball, Golden Thread, Just Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, The Marsh, Playwrights Foundation, SF Playhouse, Shotgun Players & Vertical Pool Productions. She holds a BFA in Acting from Santa Fe University of Art and Design and a diploma from The International School of Corporeal Mime. She is a co-founding member of Psychopomp and Circumstance Dance Theatre, a member of HATCH: A Festival of Devised Performance, Miss Noir City 8 and a member of AEA. As a cabaret performer she performed Madeline’s 100th Birthday Party in the Dashow Wing of the Aurora Theatre and has shimmied for London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts, Hayward Gallery and Sadler’s Wells, Stockholm’s Sodra Teatern, Oslo’s ACTS, Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe and many muddy, rock festivals. She is frequently seen in red, contemplating trouble.
Stephanie DeMott is a Mugwumpin Company Member and thinks of the company as her artistic home. She graduated summa cum laude from SF State University with a B.A. in Theater Arts and Creative Writing, and received her M.F.A from the American Conservatory Theater. She has performed with A.C.T., Magic Theatre, TheatreFirst, Word For Word, and Mugwumpin, among others. Favorite roles include May in Fool For Love, Sara in Stop Kiss, Orlando, Lady Macbeth, and Mercutio. Stephanie has taught for CIIS, specifically at Burning Man exploring devising theater under extreme conditions, and for A.C.T.'s Studio program. In 2015, she took part in Jon Tracy's first Groundswell intensive in San Miguel de Allende, and in 2016 developed and performed a piece for SMA's theater festival, TEATRAL. She also developed/performed in a piece at ZSpace called Number 1 with University of Chichester's Louie Jenkins and Madeleine H.D. Brown.
Susannah Martin is an award-winning director, theatre maker, and theatre educator. She has directed and/or made work for Shotgun Players (where she is also a company member), A.C.T., Aurora Theatre, Boxcar Theatre, Marin Theatre, Playwright’s Foundation, Porchlight Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, Sonoma County Rep, TheatreFIRST, TheatreWorks, and Town Hall Theatre, among others. She taught for CalShakes for twelve years and directed several productions for their 5-week summer conservatory. Susannah has also taught for St. Mary’s College, UC Davis, Los Medanos College, and San Francisco University High School, among others. Upcoming projects for Susannah include Ariel Luckey’s Amnesia at the SF International Arts Festival and Blockbuster Season with Mugwumpin. BFA: NYU; MFA: UC Davis. www.susannahmartin.net
Ray Oppenheimer is a San Francisco Bay Area based lighting designer, educator, and creator who has been bringing his boundless curiosity, chimerical aesthetic, and sisyphean perseverance to lighting design and education since 2005. Ray graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts with an emphasis in lighting design from San Francisco State University in the Fall of 2017. He also is an active company member with Shotgun Players. As a lighting designer, Ray has worked with The Magic Theatre, Mugwumpin, Shotgun Players, Center Rep, New Conservatory Theatre Company, Crowded Fire, Santa Cruz Shakespeare Company, Debutants and Vagabonds, David Herrera’s Dance Company, and Red Rooster. Ray is currently a lecturer at San Francisco State University. rayoppenheimer.com/
Soren Santos is an actor, mover, teacher and Bay Area native. He performed with Mugwumpin in the 2014 remount of super:anti:reluctant. He also collaborated with Mugwumpin on The Gandy Dance, a non-stop 20-hour dance party on local BART trains. Soren is a graduate of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine (Honors in Acting, Cum Laude), and has worked locally with several other theater companies, including Berkeley Rep, TheatreWorks, TheatreFIRST, Shotgun Players, New Conservatory, foolsFURY, Ragged Wing Ensemble, and more. He has also performed nationally with Movement Research (Judson Memorial Church, NYC), Counter-Balance Theater (Edison Theatre, St. Louis, MO), and Rogue Artists Ensemble (Northwest Regional Puppetry Festival, Seattle, WA). Proud hawk. Occasional gardener. Frequent cyclist. Aspiring dancer. Constant human.
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart is a multidisciplinary theater maker, actor, dancer, choreographer, and director. She has also been known to play the viola, the guitar, and even sing when people let her. As the artistic director of EmSpace Dance, Erin conceived, directed and choreographed over thirty works. As an actor, she has worked with Shotgun Players, Central Works, The Magic Theater, Crowded Fire, and Killing My Lobster. As a multidisciplinary performer and collaborator, she has worked with Erika Chong Shuch, Amara Tabor Smith, Flyaway Productions, Epiphany Dance Theater and 13th Floor, among many others. She is also a proud member of detour dance. Honors include a GOLDIE award for dance from the San Francisco Bay Guardian (2008), The Della Davidson Prize (2016) and a nomination for an Izzie Award for the remount of Monkey Gone to Heaven (2017). Erin first performed with Mugwumpin in 2010, and has been a company member since 2016. erinmstuart.com
Michelle Talgarow is a performer, director, and educator based in the Bay Area for the past 20 years, specializing in the collaborative process in devising new work. With Mugwumpin she performed in The Great Big Also and in many Occurrences, Luster and Asomnia being favorites. In 2014 she directed their remount of super:anti:reluctant for Mugwumpin10. She has performed, directed, and worked at the EXIT Theatre since 1999. She is a member of RIPE Theatre Company and ACME Performance Projects. She was the Managing Direct/Co-Founder of Train Station Theatre lab and Train Station: an actor's gym, a collective of artists dedicated to the creative development of theatrical skills and innovative training for the performer. Over the years, she’s had the honor to have worked with Shotgun Players, Impact Theatre, Ferocious Lotus Theatre, Bindlestiff Studios, Cutting Ball Theatre and Magic Theatre. Michelle graduated with honors from San Francisco State University in Theatre Performance. She has trained in a variety of physical theatre disciplines and is striving to perfect her robot and struttin’ moves.
Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky is, in addition to work with Mugwumpin, a freelance director-collaborator and lighting designer. He has worked on a broad range of scripted works, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Bremen Freedom and Sartre’s No Exit, as well as adapting and directing Wolfgang Borchert’s Draussen vor der Tür and Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus. Wolfgang has developed and directed the world premieres of Killer Queen (Burning Monk Collective), a hand in Desire (EmSpace Dance) and Owners of Nothing (Transient Theatre). For the past year and a half, he has been developing, in collaboration with a director in London and in New York, a completely online performance event. Wolfgang’s lighting design is focused on site-specific creations like Mugwumpin’s Future Motive Power at the San Francisco Old Mint and Killer Queen in a warehouse in West Hollywood in Los Angeles. Raised by a Freudian and a Marxist, he likes to get his hands dirty and think about how performance can build a better world.
Mugwumpin Alumni
Christopher W. White, Founding Artistic Director - Performance and theater artist, puppeteer, musician, and writer, Chris is co-founder and Artistic Director of Mugwumpin. Work with Mugwumpin includes directing The Great Big Also (2013), and co-creating and performing in Future Motive Power (2012), super:anti:reluctant (2006/2008 Cairo tour), and This Is All I Need (2010/2011 European tour). Around SF, Chris originated the role of Lance in Richard Montoya’s The River, with Campo Santo. He works regularly with EmSpace Dance, co-creating A Hand in Desire and Monkey Gone to Heaven. At SF Playhouse he designed puppets and directed puppetry for the West Coast premiere of David Greenspan and Stephin Merritt's musical adaptation of Coraline. He has worked with the Magic Theater, Shotgun Players, Banana Bag & Bodice, foolsFURY, Lunatique Fantastique, the SF Opera, and others.
In Dublin, Ireland, Chris served as Play Director in Residence and, later, Script Development Officer at Project Arts Centre, and also directed with various Dublin companies. He’s written articles for American Theatre, TheatreForum, Theatre Bay Area, and Howlround. MFA in Lecoq Based Actor-Created Theater: Naropa University/London International School of the Performing Arts; BA: Yale University.
He’s often spotted riding his brown bike or trying to suppress the urge to correct grammar.
Katherine Bickford
Joe Estlack (founding company member)
Denmo Ibrahim (founding company member)
Mariana Olvera
Ashley Rogers