Sandy Spieler is a painter, sculptor, performer, teacher, theater designer and director. She is the Artistic Director of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre since 1976, and is one of the company's founders.
Her work includes tiny odd shows, 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 led residencies throughout the region.
She asks that performance awaken us to the “Wonder! ?” of our everyday lives. Sandy feels privileged to work daily with the amazingly creative team of passionate people that cluster around In the Heart of the Beast Theatre.
Various awards, commissions and fellowships throughout the years have recognized her work. Sandy has an MA of Cultural Performance form 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. She is the mother of two wonderful young adults.
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.
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 twenty 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, Invigorate the Common Well, Beneath the Surface, When We Look, On the Day You Were Born, Coyote Stories and the MayDay Parade and Ceremony.
Kristi Ternes is a local wingnut who has worked out of Bedlam Theatre for the past eight years. She has also worked with Barebones Productions, Open Eye Figure Theatre, Interact Center for the Arts and Jar of Mold Productions.
She recently created Iron Mermaids at Bedlam Theatre which was featured in American Theatre Magazine and her shadow puppet collaboration with Roger Peet entitled Autotomy received a “Best Show with Unseen Actors” in the 2004 Best of City Pages edition.
Alison Heimstead is a parade and spectacle artist. She has helped communities all over the United States create puppeted events including: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Parade School with Nana Projects, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Islewilde! on Vashon Island and Barebones Halloween Harvest Extravaganza. She is delighted to be working on the Mayday Parade.
Janaki Ranpura connected with the Twin Cities puppet community through Gotama, an HOBT mainstage production in 2006.
Having trained at the Lecoq school in Paris, she is a performer who writes and creates solo puppet shows. She is exploring ways to connect science with theater. She leads community arts work here and afield: she directs Islewilde in Washington state, an annual puppet-based arts festival on Vashon Island near Seattle.
She also works on Barebones Productions' local Halloween puppet celebration, and has designed and taught for several parades in Taiwan.
She tours two of her shows: Our Dread of Blood, a toy theater show in which the audience participates in a heart surgery; and Lovesick Sea Play, a high seas adventure about the perils and pleasures of love. In 2008, she won a UNIMA Citation of Excellence. J-J Trinket’s Series is Janaki's production company. Visit her website.
Julian McFaul is a local artist and actor who has enjoyed building and performing for this community, immensely, since 1992.
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 a group of roustabouts for the Old Reliable Horsedrawn Spectacular - a horse and wagon tour from northern Vermont to central Massachusetts.
She has also recently taken up ventriloquism and has already won or almost won three different gong shows! She continues to work with the Barebones Halloween show and has recently retired from the jug band contest.
This is Lindsay's 3rd year on the MayDay Staff.
Mark Safford has been a puppeteer in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area since 1991 with Galumph at the Jungle.
Since then, he or his puppets have appeared at the Ordway, the Red Eye, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, Theater de la June Lune, the Minnesota Opera Co., Bedlam Theater, and in many public parks and riverside squats for the Barebones Halloween Extravaganza of which he was a co-founder and active supporter and participant for the last fifteen years.
When not at HOTB, Mark is usually working for Art Start , East Side Arts Council, Leonardo’s Basement , or Barebones productions or the Ordway’s Children’s Festival, or other event fundraisers for Barebones Halloween Show.
Harry Kingham is currently working as an intern with HOBT.
Harry is from the UK where he trained in Physical Theatre at Hope St Ltd, Liverpool (2000). When he is in the UK he performs with Street Theatre Duo, “Fools Rush In” and works in community circus as a unicyclist, stilt walker and fire performer.
Recently he has worked as a volunteer with the Liverpool Lantern Company and with the Welshampon Festival of Fire.
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, Steppingstone Theater, and ArtStart. She co-founded both Magic Lantern Puppet Theater (2000) and the Midtown Market puppet series Stories on a String (2004).
She has received grant awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Puppeteers of America, and the Jerome Foundation. She was recently named a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Educator. Anne is currently exploring textile arts and working on her children's book titled Nalah and the Pink Tiger. Visit Anne's Website
Bart Buch is a puppeteer, poet and teaching artist. His career in puppetry began 13 years ago creating bedtime puppet shows, about a salmon and starfish falling in love, in his backyard for friends and neighbors.
He has worked with In The Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre for 10 years as a puppeteer, teacher, puppet designer, and is currently Education Co-Director. Through Heart of the Beast and independently, Bart has worked with a wide variety of populations including churches, small rural towns, elementary schools, homeless shelters, a chorus, queer youth, adults with developmental disabilities, union workers’ children, and a GLBT families’ organization, to create puppet parades, ceremonies, community rituals, and performances.
He also has been creating his own independent poetry-puppetry performances for 10 years working with the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Wendell Berry, Samuel Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca, his own poetry and others. His independent puppet show, Ode to Walt Whitman, is being performed at HERE Arts Center in New York City June 3-7, and at Heart of the Beast next fall.
Kevin Long has been working with puppets for eleven 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 sixth year on the MayDay staff. Kevin also performs his own original puppetry work. Kevin 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 also performs as a singer/songwriter.
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).
Stacy Lee King first found a purposeful approach to theatre while studying Ritual Poetic Drama in the African Continuum with Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates and an awesome crew of performing artists in Seattle, WA. She further explored technique and theory in The Theatre Conservatory at Chicago College of Performing Arts. In Chicago, Stacy Lee became involved in spectacle and puppet performance as a core creator/performer with Manifest Theatre and worked with Redmoon Theater (The Bug Show, Twilight Orchard, and (as a designer) Princess Club). In Minneapolis, she has performed with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (May Day 2008: A New Bridge; Decorate the Well in Gratitude; and La Natividad) and Sandbox Theatre (The Horse, The Bird, The Monkey, and the Dancer). With the performance project a.a. king & sons, she is planning a puppet-filled midwestern bike tour for the summer of 2010. She is ecstatic to work with the May Day artists and experience this massive parade making process.
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 Ud din 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. Since he moved to Minnesota, he has continued to develop new puppet work oriented to family audiences in South Minneapolis. This year Gustavo is part of MayDay 2009, as Parade Section Leader.
Malia Burkhart has worked with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre since 1999. Malia is a graduate of the Perpich Center for Arts Education, and received a BA in "Art as Community Activism" and Studio Art through St. Olaf College.
Malia performs and teaches residencies in puppetry through many organizations in the Twin Cities. Malia has worked on puppet-projects in Taiwan, Japan, on the ocean in a Peace Boat, Argentina, Chile, and Korea. For more information, check out her website at www.artsbymalia.com
Tina Nemetz been working and volunteering around the Beast for 15 years. This is her third year on the MayDay Art Staff. She is a resident of Powderhorn Park neighborhood.
Tina is a sculptor and mentor in the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota. She currently is works on community metal casting projects in Minnesota and Iowa.
Emma Byron is a UK-based visual artist, maker and performer. She works with puppetry and performance installation - from large scale spectacle to smaller scale shadow theatre and visual storytelling.
She has worked and trained with visual performance companies including Welfare State International and Horse and Bamboo Theatre; and has made puppets, installations, carnival costumes and other images for community festivals, protests and contemporary ceremonies.
Angie Courchaine is new to May Day, and very excited to be part of it. She is a visual artist, actress, and longtime dancer, having performed for many years in Eastern Wisconsin and more recently in Bad Sushi Theater’s “Last Right” in the Twin Cities.
Angie is currently branching out into choreography, and recently completed a residency at Burroughs Elementary School, creating and teaching a performance featured in the Augsburg Peace Prize Festival.
She is an Architecture/Urban Studies/Sustainability student at the University of Minnesota and is very interested in social justice and the arts, which led to her present participation in the HECUA City Arts Program.
In addition to May Day, Angie is currently helping plan Actifest at the U of M through her involvement with Amnesty International.
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.