MayDay Staff 2012
Sandy Spieler
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
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 thirty and has worked with the theater in a variety of capacities including residencies.
In addition to working at HOBT, she has worked with a variety of other arts organizations including Zamya, Kids Solidarity Theatre, Illusion Theatre, Interact, At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre, and Voices of Sepharad.
Bart Buch
Bart Buch is a poet, puppeteer, and teaching artist. He has been studying, creating, performing and teaching puppet theatre for 15 years independently and at Heart of the Beast, where he is Education Director.
Bart's work focuses on composing puppetry-poems. He is currently developing an original new show, kid enkidu, to be presented at HOBT in January-February 2013.
Bart can be artistically stalked at bartbuch.com.
Mark Safford
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 HOBT, Mark is usually working for 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.
Kevin Long
Kevin Long has been working with puppets for thirteen 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).
Kevin also performs his own original puppetry work and taught puppetry classes for children at Country Day Creative Arts in New Orleans, LA for five summers. Kevin has a BA in Theatre from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. This summer you can find Kevin performing with Open Eye Figure Theatre's Driveway Tour.
In addition to being a puppeteer Kevin also performs as a singer/songwriter and plays trombone in a Minneapolis rock band called The Drug Budget.
This is Kevin's ninth year on the MayDay staff.
Lindsay
McCaw
Lindsay McCaw has a semi-permanent dwelling in Northern Vermont.
Lindsay is one half of the Dolly Wagglers puppet company with Adam Cook.
They are also founding members of The Old Reliable Amusement Company, which performs mostly on the East Coast. You can see her and Adam this year at the Gays Mills Folk Festival or the Banners and Cranks Festival in NYC.
This is Lindsay's 6th year on the MayDay Staff.
Gustavo Boada
Gustavo Boada is a visual and performance artist with more then 24 years experience working in professional theaters in Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico and the USA.
He 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 Puppetry in Practice at Brooklyn College as Artistic Director.
This is Gustavo's sixth year as part of the MayDay artistic staff.
Tina Nemetz
Tina Nemetz works primarily as a sculptor in mixed media cast iron, natural materials and papier-mache. Interpreting both transitory and enduring emotional and spiritual experiences.
Inspired by earth and water images; imaging the fragile yet enduring transformation of female energy. Combining native materials with male energy of iron is the primal fight.
Tina's heart belongs to community arts projects and empowering people. This coming year you will probably find her hanging out at the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center. Whooot!
This is Tina's 6th year on Mayday staff.
Soozin Hirschmugl
Soozin Hirschmugl is a puppeteer, visual artist, teacher, and spectacle/pageant director. She has been making puppets and thinking up puppet ideas for the past 20 years and loves all aspects of "Celebratory Arts", especially pageants and parades!
Over the years Soozin has worked as a company member with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and The Bread and Puppet Theater. She is a founding member of Barebones Productions and Chicks on Sticks, and has had the great pleasure to work with Open Eye Figure Theater, Bedlam Theater, Three Legged Race, The Ordway Children's Festival, Forecast Public Arts, The Hebben Bridge Handmade Parade in Hebden Bridge, England, Walk the Plank Theater in Manchester, England and Dream Community in Taipei, Taiwan.
When not at HOBT, Soozin teaches puppetry and visual arts at The Saint Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts and works at creating new work with her collaborator, Mary Jo Nikolai, at their puppet company, Public Domain Productions.
This summer you can see her work every weekend in a new puppet performance at the Minnesota Zoo, " Odessa's Amazing Animal Adventure!"
Lynette La Rue
Lynette La Rue was one of the first professional artists in the
Milwaukee area to build larger-than-life puppets for parades,
pageants, and a wide variety of stages, including Milwaukee Symphony
Orchestra Kinderconcerts.
She has been a lead artist on the "All
City People's Parade" in Milwaukee for a number of years. Lynette has
written and directed large youth events in the Twin Cities since 2005,
written and directed shows, and built puppets, masks and/or costumes
for professional companies and colleges in Florida, Texas, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota.
She was a colorist for Discovery Comics and is the
illustrator of A Bug's Gift, which is listed in the American Comic
Book Collection.
This is Lynette's third year as MayDay Ceremony Stage Manager. She has
been a rostered teaching artist for HOBT and in community agencies,
arts centers and schools.
Trained also as an educator, Ms. La Rue
teaches students from preschool through adulthood, how to integrate
the arts into their everyday lives.
Blake Love
Blake Love is a 26-year-old puppeteer living in South Minneapolis, where he likes riding bicycles, swimming in lakes and rivers, reading books, playing musical instruments, trees, doodling, making and performing puppet shows, and walking through parks holding hands.
He studied Spanish and Portuguese Language Literatures at the University of Minnesota. Blake is honored to be making art in his community.
Dee Henry Williams
Dee Henry Williams is a professional artist whose Blue Jean Art workshop helps participants to think outside the box and experience the exhilaration of living in the moment.
Her added talents are photography, paint on canvas, and designer dishware using porcelain paint.
Dee produces a weekly radio program, Great Blend of Watercolors, on KFAI radio. She is a 2008 Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership grantee and Community Liaison for the African Diaspora. Her recent blue jean art exhibits are: Capstone Gallery's Urban Folk and Obsidian Arts' Soul On Ice.
Dee maintains two organic gardens in both Minneapolis and St. Paul and from those gardens decorates her blue jean art masks and wreaths with a variety of homegrown chili peppers.
Emily May Taylor
Emily May Taylor is a puppeteer and teaching artist. She also writes poems and songs, makes prints, and studies herbal medicine. She apprenticed at Bread and Puppet Theatre in Glover, VT and returns there as a performer for part of the summer.
As a Minneapolis native who moved back a couple years ago after several years away, she has been delighted to dive into puppetry around the city, including involvement with BareBones Productions and participation in shows at Bedlam Theatre and In the Heart of the Beast Theatre.
Part of what draws her to puppetry is its profound potential for healing. To her, puppetry is a critical and magical part of the work of crafting sustainable communities. This is her second year on Staff.
Angie Courchaine
Angie Courchaine is a collaborative artist working and teaching primarily in puppetry, dance, visual art, and theatre arts.
In 2009, she was a HECUA intern during May Day, and she is incredibly excited to be back on staff.
She also performs with Barebones, as well as various other community projects, including recently the Wheel Sexy Bike Cabaret and On the Phone with My Mother (a show about the female experience today).
Cecile Bellamy
CeCe was born in St. Paul Minnesota. At the age of eleven she took a real interest in art and started to learn some of the history of art and artists. Near the end of high school, she qualified to attend a college level art course at the University of Minnesota and continued on the next year. After two years, she hit a financial slump, left college and focused on working different jobs.
In 1994 she was accepted at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and found an apartment close by where she still lives to this day. Despite severe illness prior to graduation, she managed to get a degree in fine art.
After college she worked a series of full time jobs before deciding she wanted more of a challenge in her occupation and signing up for national service. In her second year with AmeriCorps, she was assigned to In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, assisting staff with productions and hosting Saturday Morning Puppet Shows. She continued on for a couple more years then decided to move on, only volunteering for MayDay from time to time.
Within a year, she fell ill again and had become disabled. While attending a day program at HCMC, counselors introduced her to a community support program that has an art group called Spectrum Artworks. For the first time she felt she was able to produce new artwork and sell her pieces. She still works with her art group and is in her first year as a MayDay Artistic Staff Artist.
Willow Cordes Eklund
Willow Cordes-Eklund participated in her first Mayday over 20 years ago at the age of 2.
Her life has been influenced in immeasurable ways by her relationship with In The Heart of the Beast and the many artists that have flowed through it. In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater was present in her church, school and neighborhood, offering many opportunities to grow, not only as a puppeteer but a muralist, a dancer, and theater performer.
When she is not building puppets she is working around the world as an environmental activist. Using puppets to share stories of environmental destruction, she hopes to build awareness and provoke action to create change.
Monica Rojas
Monica Rojas is a student of the everyday, creating art and playing since birth. She just graduated from the University of Minnesota, with a Theater Arts degree. Along with being on the May Day staff, she works in a Minneapolis Public School as a teacher's aide.
For the past three years she was worked as an undergrad TA for the light lab at the U of M during the school year, and for the After Sunset Shadow Troupe during the summer. She also volunteers as the Arts and Crafts Coordinator for Camp Quest of Minnesota.
This is Monica's first year on the May Day staff.
Madeline Helling
Madeline Helling grew up in Minneapolis in a community with a deep-seeded appreciation for creative expression. Only in the past few years, however, did she get involved with HOBT. Her first taste of a MayDay workshop instilled in her a need for more, and so from 2010-2011 she volunteered as an intern at HOBT. She has since created and performed small puppet shows around town such as Melon, Llama and The Snow Fox.
She finds the communal aspect of MayDay invigorating. She is fascinated by the transformative processes included in the work and construction of puppet-making, as well as the embodiment of performance.
She values the versatility of unitards and holds a special place in her heart for fancy hats.
Bailey Haack
Bailey Haack is a glitter enthusiast who loves to try out all different art forms, especially the ones where you're supposed to make a mess. Along with being an intern at HOBT working mainly on marketing, she volunteers at the Animal Humane Society and fosters cats.
She is currently a Design/Art/Mass Communication student at the University of Minnesota, and is participating in the HECUA City Arts program. She was a student business manager for two small productions in her hometown.
This is Bailey's first year as a marketing and MayDay intern.
Bios Coming Soon:
Bill Osbrisch
JeongAe Neal
Tara Fahey
