MayDay Staff 2008

Ceremony

Sandy Spieler

Sandy Spieler is a painter, sculptor, performer, teacher and theater director. She is the Artistic Director of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in the USA since 1976, and is one of the company¹s founders. Her work includes tiny puppet shows performed in a suitcase, main stage theater productions, and the Annual MayDay Parade and Ceremony involving thousands of participants in her diverse urban home community in Minneapolis, USA. She has directed Ceremonial Events in South Korea, Los Angeles, and the Dominican Republic, and built several public installations honoring Water. She asks that performance awaken us to the “Wonder!?” of our everyday lives.
Sandy¹s work has been recognized through numerous awards including the Bush Foundation¹s Leadership and Artist Fellowships, Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, Jerome Travel and Study Grants, and Intermedia Arts/McKnight Interdisciplinary Fellowship. She has an MA Cultural Performance from Bristol University England, studied puppetry arts at Bread and Puppet Theatre in Glover, Vermont, Balinese masked dance at New York University, and is part of the International ECOARTS network.

Julie Kastigar Boada

Julie Boada (Performer / Puppeteer) is a puppeteer and visual artist with a B.A. in Studio Art and American Indian Studies. She has been involved with HOBT for nineteen years, and has been teaching residencies for seventeen years. In addition to having her art work in shows at the First People’s Gallery, Katherine Nash, and WARM, she has also worked on the summer native teen mural project with the Minneapolis American Indian OIC and a mural project for Anoka School District. In addition, Julie has taught for The Native American Theater Project, Indian Fine Arts Association, American Indian Health Board, and at the University of Minnesota Studio Arts Department, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Julie has been involved in numerous productions with In Heart of the Beast including A COMPANY OF ANGELS, THE PINK DRESS, INVIGORATE THE COMMON WELL, ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN, COYOTE STORIES and the MayDay Parade and Ceremony.

Esther Ouray

Esther Ouray is a puppeteer with a degree in theatre arts and a vast training in dance and movement. She has been involved with HOBT for over twenty-five years, and has worked with the theater in a variety of capacities including residencies. In addition to working at HOBT, she has worked with Kids Solidarity Theatre, Illusion Theatre, Interact, Epoch Productions, Jewish Community Center of St. Paul, At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre, and Voices of Sepharad.

Reed Aubin

Reed Aubin (Performer/Puppeteer) is a puppeteer, playwright, translator, and musician in his first year working with In the Heart of the Beast as a MayDay Artist. He has a B.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics from Brown University, where he also completed a certificate program in playwriting with a focus in Ritual Theatre. Originally from Washington State, Reed has lived extensively in Latin America and around the U.S., performing with Nicaraguan Teatro SubImp, Argentinian Puppet Theatre La Chancleta Rota, Rhode Island's Home Planet Theatre, and Understory Theatre, which he continues to direct. Staged Productions include PEZ/PESCADO: AN EAT PLAY, THE BUSTED LEVEE PUPPET SHOW, AGUA QUERIDA (HA AIX), THE BIODIESEL PUPPET SHOW, and NOT A KERNEL TO EAT. His first stint with HOBT was last year as a musician for HOW FLOWERS CHANGED THE WORLD. Reed has worked as a permaculture designer, historian, Alaskan fisherman, carpenter, web designer and spanish translator/interpreter. He plays a mean mambo piano and blues harmonica. Visit Reed's Website

Section 1: Racing to Collapse

Duane Tougas

Duane Tougas has been working at HOBT since 1991. He has traveled the world serving as a performer, designer, builder and puppeteer. Duane has worked with communities and organizations to create performances and festivals. He is a 2001 Jerome Grant recipient and a multi-disciplinary artist always experimenting in new forms.

Julian McFaul

Julian McFaul is a local artist and actor who has enjoyed building and performing for this community, immensely, since 1992.

Lindsay McCaw

Lindsay McCaw resides in the hills of southwest Wisconsin. Lindsay is one half of the Dolly Wagglers puppet company with Adam Cook. They most recently joined forces with other cardboard slingers for the Winter Boxcutter Cabaret Tour. Lindsay also helped Grammas Saggy Jug Band archive its second victory this winter at the annual Jug Band Battle. This is her second year on the MayDay Staff. She has also recently worked with the Barebones Halloween Show and Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont.
Visit Lindsay's Blog

Section 2: Change of Heart

Tina Nemetz

Tina Nemetz been working and volunteering around the Beast for 15 years. This is her second year on the MayDay Art Staff. She is a resident of Powderhorn Park neighborhood. Tina is a Mentor in the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota. She currently is working on community metal casting projects in Minnesota and Iowa.

Mary Plaster

Mary Plaster is multi-media artist residing with her family in Duluth. Her graduate background is painting; especially egg tempera, because of the alchemical process with animal, vegetable, and mineral materials. She is currently a Doctor of Ministry candidate in Matthew Fox's University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, CA. Her theatrical puppet, props and scenic painting internship began in Minneapolis in the 1980s with the Children's Theatre Company and she has worked over the years with several street and community theater groups, including volunteering in a few HOBT MayDay parades. She learned most of her papier-mâché and other cheap art magic during a three-year stint with the experts of Teatro Libre of Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. In 2008 Mary received the McKnight Arrowhead Regional Arts Council individual individual career development grant to participate in the July Apprenticeship program with Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont.
Visit Mary's Website

Section 3: - Now

Anne Sawyer-Aitch

Anne Sawyer-Aitch is a puppeteer, stilt-walker, playwright and arts educator. Specializing in color shadow puppets, stilt puppets, and masks, she has created and performed in theaters and festivals around Minnesota. She has worked with Chicks on Sticks, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, Open Eye Figure Theater, Galumph Interactive Theater, The Minnesota Science Museum, Steppingstone Theater, Barebones Productions, and ArtStart. She co-founded both Magic Lantern Puppet Theater (2000) and the Midtown Market puppet series Stories on a String (2004). Her more recent works include the full-length, multi-media shadow show Ala Dean and the Marvelous Lamp (Center for Independent Artists, 2006) and Bate, Bate Chocolate (2007). Anne has received grant awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Puppeteers of America, and the Jerome Foundation. She is currently working on a new children's book, Nalah and the Pink Tiger. Visit Anne's Website

Ramon Cordes

Ramon Cordes has been hanging around the HOBT since he was a little boy. Now he spends his time making art, working (money for art), and hanging out with loved ones. And rolling around town on wheels.

Section 4: But Think Ahead

Bart Buch

Bart Buch is a puppeteer, poet and teaching artist who has worked with HOBT for ten years. He has been in the main stage HOBT productions Winter Dreams, Gyre, The Nightingale, Seed, La Befana, Invigorate the Common Well and has been on MayDay Staff for ten years also. He teaches puppetry-arts residencies around the Twin Cities and throughout the state. He is currently touring his puppet show, Ode to Walt Whitman, and developing a new blacklight-theatre, puppet adaptation of The Little Prince by Antoine de Exupery. Bart is an Interim Education Co-Director at HOBT.

Janaki Ranpura

Janaki Ranpura connected with the Twin Cities puppet community through Gotama, a HOBT mainstage production in 2006. Having trained at the Lecoq school, she is a performer who has focused for the last few years on puppet building and manipulation. She has directed parades in Taiwan through the Dream Community and directs Islewilde, an annual puppet-based arts festival on Vashon Island near Seattle. Her current solo performance series, Operations Theater, explores ways to make scientific facts viscerally available to an audience. She intermittently tours two shows: Dread of Blood, a toy theater show in which the audience participates in a heart surgery; and Lovesick Sea Play, an ever-changing exploration of monogamy through pirates. J-J Trinket’s Series is Janaki's production company. Visit Janaki's website.

Kevin Long

Kevin Long has been working with puppets for ten years. During that time Kevin has worked with The Bread and Puppet Theatre (Vermont), Madcap Productions (Ohio), In The Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (Minnesota), Barebones Productions (Minnesota), and Open Eye Figure Theatre (Minnesota). This is Kevin's fourth year on the MayDay staff. Kevin sometime performs his own original work with his fledgling company called The Shoestring Puppet Theatre. The Shoestring Puppet Theatre scored a hit at the 2005 Minnesota Fringe Festival with "The Adventures of Can-Man". Kevin has a BA in Theatre from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. In addition to being a puppeteer Kevin is the vocalist and guitarist for the Minneapolis band "Boxcutter".

Section 5 - We Are

Gustavo Boada

Gustavo Boada is a visual and performance artist with more then 23 years experience working in professional theaters in Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico and the USA. Gustavo is well known for his work with traditional dance and mask performance (Asian, European and Andeans) as well as designing and building puppets, performative structures and set design. Gustavo has worked with a number of puppet theaters including, Bread and Puppet, the Puerto Rican Puppet Theater, and with Puppetry in Practice at Brooklyn College as Artistic Director. In June 2003, Gustavo moved to Philadelphia and founded the non-profit NAYLAMP Street & Puppet Theater creating four annual street theater plays, Children play's and a theater version of Farid Uddin Attar 'The Conference of the Birds" and "Memories of fire ' based in poems of Margaritte Yourcesnar. Gustavo has been working as artist in residency with Spiral Q Puppet Theater. In 2007 He was part of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater as Mayday Parade Section leader. This year Gustavo is part of MayDay 2008 staff as section leader.

Masanari Kawahara

Masanari Kawahara is a performer who incorporates puppetry, mask and clowning into his work. He has been a company member of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT) since 1998. At HOBT, Masanari has collaborated on main stage productions, most recently Beneath the Surface (2008), La Natividad (2008 and 2007), and Come To The Well (2007). He was the co-creator and designer for GOTAMA: Journey to the Buddha (2006), recognized by City Pages as one of the ten great sets/scenic designs of the year. In addition, Masanari has conceived, designed, and directed several solo short works including GOJIRA! (2006-2008). He created a performance art piece, RETURNING as the recipient of the Naked Stages Program (2004) and was the recipient of the Blacklock Fellowship for Emerging Artists (2003).