Kristin Abhalter, Section Designer, poster illustrator

Kristin is a Twin Cities based scenic artist and set designer with a fondness for cardboard and glitter.

Co-Director, Halloween 2009

Christopher Allen is a Twin Cities born actor, community arts teacher, printmaker, and set builder. As a child, he began performing in his parent’s basement creating site-specific pieces centering on youth and parental angst. In more recent times Christopher has performed in and built for Barebones Annual Halloween Show since 2006.

He has been working as a performer and company member of Bedlam Theatre since 2007. His most recent work includes set design for Million Dollar Museum at Bedlam Theatre, performing in the 2009 Fringe show Comedy Of Errors, and playing an angst-filled teenager in Joseph Evan’s Turducken.

As well as performing on stage at various Twin Cities Theaters, Christopher enjoys building shadow puppets, paper cuts, and woodcuts. When not working on a show, he is Youth Coordinator at Bedlam, helping Cedar Riverside youth express themselves and each other through community and the performing arts. Most recently in collaboration with Brian Coyle Center youth he organized and created a neighborhood “Urban Safari” parade, teaching nearly 20 kids to stilt.

He was co-director of Barebones Halloween 2009, and delighted to bring a little pure evil into the show.

Visiting Artist, Halloween 2009

Music Director, 2009 Halloween Show

Graphics Designer, Halloween 2009

JoAnn Blohowiak is a South Minneapolis resident, artist, and graphic designer. She has created the BareBones tabloid for several years, and has played her trumpet with the BareBones Music Ensemble at the Halloween Extravaganza.

Visit JoAnn’s Website

Co-Director, Halloween 2009

Lelis Brito is a Venezuelan-American director, choreographer, performer and educator of movement-theater who has worked for national and international venues for over 25 years.

Her early training in dance with the Joffrey Ballet and Solange Golovine led her to a professional career in dance, dancing with Dayton Contemporary Dance, Cincinnati Contemporary Dance theatre, and Kei Takei’s Moving Earth amongst others.

Having created over 70 original works to date, including plays, choreographed dances, and visual scenography narratives, she began stretching her compositional thinking at Antioch College in the late 80’s where she studied puppetry and Visual Scenography with Amy Trompetter and others, and developed her performance composition under the tutelage of Dimitra Reber. She moved on to become a member of various performance collectives and collaboratives and locally has performed with In the Heart of the Beast, Trece Lunas Arts Collective, Bedlam Theatre, Rosy Simas Dance Company, Red Eye Collaborative, and more.

She has served as dance faculty at Antioch College, taught dance, composition, and performance for various companies, and has brought kinaethetic education into the public school classrooms through her Kinaesthetic Connections program. For 3 years, she developed innovative family-centered somatic fitness programming for Running Wolf Fitness Center. In 1997 she earned her MFA in dance composition, developing physical approach to Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the oppressed techniques. She continues to develop Boal’s work, most recently teaching at the International Theatre of the Oppressed conference in May of 2009.

She has choreographed and coached stilters and fire performers (most recently for Rah Kojis’ Infiamati) and in 2004 was assistant Director for the Puppetry Arts Studio production of Mercurius Lumens. She is the founder of the Center for Moving Cultures, an organization dedicated to transforming the experienced body through education and performance. She is also a certified personal trainer and body image educator.

After performing with Barebones Fleeced, she joined the Barebones team as co-director of Devoured in 2009, helping to weave multiple visions into a cohesive dream at the end of Fall.

Malia was raised in Bloomington, Minnesota. She attended the Arts High School at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, where she studied music composition and visual arts. After graduating high school in 1994, Malia earned a BA degree in 1998 from the Paracollege at St. Olaf College. She double-majored in Studio Art and “Art as Community Activism”, with additional studies in Performance Art through the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (1996). In 1999, Malia Burkhart began working with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater (HOBT) as an Americorps volunteer, and has since become an associate artist with the company.

Currently, Malia works independently as a residency teacher, puppet-builder and performer for multiple organizations. With HOBT, her puppets and performances have been featured in mainstage productions including Gyre, Seed, Winter Dreams, Gotama, Invigorate the Common Well, episodes I, II, and III, and smaller touring shows. Malia has been an active member of the all-female stilting performance group Chicks on Sticks since 1999, and has designed puppets and performed in the Halloween Extravaganza through Barebones Arts Collective.

Throughout the school year and summer, Malia teaches arts residencies for grades K – 12 in mask-making and puppetry. She can be booked to come to your school by contacting her directly, or through COMPAS. Malia also teaches arts residencies through the Minnesota State Arts Board, East Side Arts Council of St. Paul, In the Heart of the Beast Theater, The Ordway Center for Performing Arts, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Malia was a recipient of the 2007 Naked Stages Program through Intermedia Arts and the Jerome Foundation. Naked Stages is an intensive performance research program designed to give artists a supportive environment in which to build their performance and production skills while creating a new performance art piece. Through this program, Malia debuted “The Survival Pages” — a one-woman show investigating her relationship to nature through theater, video projection, dance, and original music.

Malia’s international experience includes: studying Butoh Dance (2001-2003) in Japan with Min Tanaka and Ken Mai, leading a parade section in the 2005 Dream Parade in Taiwan, and participating as a volunteer English teacher on the Peace Boat, where she toured 17 countries around the southern hemisphere over the course of 4 months. Onboard the Peace Boat, Malia led puppet workshops and presented multi-lingual puppet shows in Argentina and Chile, promoting awareness of Global Warming and the water crisis.

Malia Burkhart is a biracial artist of Japanese- and German-American descent.

Visiting Artist, Halloween 2009

Halloween Show 2009 Visiting Artist

Adam is one half of the Dolly Wagglers puppet company with Lindsay McCaw. He has also joined forces with the Winter Boxcutter Cabaret Tour, Grammas Saggy Jug Band, the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont, and the Barebones Halloween Show.

Halloween Show 2009 Section Designer

Site Manager, Halloween Extravaganza 2011

Brent joined BareBones Productions in 1999 as a Puppeteer for “YDK”, was Halloween Usher Coordinator for seven years, and has been Halloween Site Manager and de-facto Fire Safety Coordinator since 2005. Brent has also served on the Board of Directors since 2005 including two years as Chair and three years as Treasurer. He has performed as a pogo-stilter twice for Halloween in the roles of “vampire bat” and “gargoyle”.

In 2006 and 2007, Brent chaired the BareBones Dumpster Duel Coordinating Committee (BBDDCC)  and has performed as a puppeter, stilter, and bicycle puppeteer for various BareBones gigs, notably as a giant, disembodied chain saw on stage at First Avenue in 2000.

In addition to his work with BareBones Productions, Brent has been a regular on the MayDay Parade & Festival scene at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater in Minneapolis. He built and performed eleven large puppets for the MayDay Parade as a volunteer between 1998 and 2011, was MayDay Ceremony Stage Manager in 2004 and 2005, and was Parade Line-Up Security Coordinator from 2007-2009.

Occasionally, Brent can be spotted on the regional puppet, spectacle, and performance scene as a stilter, puppeteer, fire safety spotter, or banjoist, and has fulfilled various performance or backside roles involving the Bayfield Apple Festival, Art Car Parade, Art Shanty Projects, Live Art, Art Sled Rally, and Bedlam Theatre. His jug band, “Sasquatch Wristwatch,” after years of “also ran” anonymity, took Third Place in 2009 & 2010 at the annual Minneapolis “Battle of the Jug Bands” Sunday Afternoon Waffle League at the Cabooze before bringing home the coveted Pancake Griddle for 1st Prize in the Saturday Night Pancake League at the Nomad World Pub in 2011.

Brent casts an iron piece each year at iron pours produced by Ironhead Sculptural Services, and has achieved a certain underground notoriety in local private party circles as a “fire pour” performance artist who makes edible spectacles using homemade ice cream, Flaming Cherries Jubilee, and the amazing “fuererzangenbowle”.

Photographer, Halloween 2009

Section Designer, Halloween 2009

Soozin Hirschmugl is a puppeteer, theater director, visual artist, and spectacle/pageant director. In 1994 she moved to Minneapolis Minnesota and began volunteering with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater as a production assistant/intern. In 1997 she became a Staff Artist. During her time with the theater she assisted in the creation of, performed in and built puppets for Winter Dreams (1998), Website (1997), Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (1997), and The Hunt (1997). She also started creating her own solo work for their New Work Series Hand, Ear, Eye Mouth (1998). She has also been and continues to work as a regular staff artist on the Annual May Day Parade and Festival.

In 1998 she worked with The Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont on the last Our Domestic Resurrection Circus. From 1999 – 2003 she worked as a company member with Bread and Puppet, performing in over 1,000 shows through out the United States and abroad. Her hi-lights are performing and leading workshops at the World Expo, in Hanover Germany (2000), Festival de Liege in Liege Belgium (2001), Anseong Juksan Int’l Arts Festival in Juksan Korea (2001), and the International Festival of Theater in Seoul Korea (2002). She considers the four years she worked with the theater to be her graduate studies of this particular form of puppetry and pageantry.

In 2004 Soozin returned to Minneapolis to continue to develop her own work and to nurture her relationship with Barebones Productions, a group she helped found sixteen years ago. Since her return she has co-directed, designed, and performed in the last four productions.

Since her return to Minneapolis Soozin has developed a reputation as an innovative and multi disciplinary puppet and visual theater artist. During the summer of 2004 she performed with Open Eye Figure Theater, The Adventures of Katie Tomatie, launching the Summer Driveway Tours. In 2005 she created several new works. With In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater she created two small shows as part of the Lake Street Excavation Project, a walking tour and public installation/ puppet performance of the Lake Street neighborhood. For the Art Shanty Projects, a project of the Soap Factory, she created an Art Shanty and Cantasotria, (After the Fall), a sung picture story performance based on the life of Giordano Bruno and the story of Icarus. In 2008 She was selected to create, The Black Box Theater Shanty, a ten seat performance venue. In 2005 as a work in progress for the Bedlam Theater, 10- Minute Play Festival she created Still it Moves, an actor based interpretation of the Bruno and Galileo relationship. In February of 2008 she staged and performed a workshop presentation of, The Starry Messenger, At the Open Eye Figure Theater Toy Theater After Dark Series exploring and intersecting Galileo’s life story using a Japanese style of Cantastoria and a Toy Theater interpretation of the story of Genesis. As part of a fellowship with the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, a program of the Jerome Foundation she created a Cantastoria based on the etchings of the 14th Century artist Pieter Bruggel the Sr. dedicated to the people of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. In December 2007 she was awarded a Jim Henson Foundation Project Grant for the development and staging of the culmination of her work into a full length multi-media puppet production of, Still it Moves.

She has worked as a puppet consultant and collaborator with Alison Heimstead and has presented works with her as part of the Three Legged Race Hand Held/Hand Driven series and at the Chicago Puppetry Arts Festival and with Andrew Kim developing ideas for The Three Penny Opera in Seattle WA, Gotama at in the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, and The Dream Parade in Shizu, Taiwan.

Xena Huff is a relatively new puppet maker, specializing in bike puppets and giant insects.

With great sorrow we honor the life of our departed friend, brother, teacher, lover and hero, Loren Kellen, who left us on Friday, October 2, 2009.

From Mark Safford:

Sorrow for the world’s loss. Particularly in our circle. Loren was Prometheus as inventor, Sisiphus as performer, Apollo as the bringer of the sun, Lover in the truest sense of the word and a vital energy that this world needs to stay in balance. Loren shared and his swing was a testament to his confidence and ability in life’s pleasures. He was a ready hand at whatever he put his energies to, and those energies were significant. An active force of reuse and reanimation Loren was a collector collaborator and creator of quality moments in life. Dancing with Otis Ouray on fiery blacktop. Brilliant rough hewn flamingos speak to both his artistry and his capacity for love of life. Always an adventurer, navigating rivers, or Lake street on the equinox. He was and is a beautiful incarnation and my head burns with a welling sadness for Lisa and all of those who will miss him. There are few who live life so well.

From Maren Ward:

Dear Sun crews past and future,
You may or may not have heard by now: our beloved Capn Bobber, Loren Kellen, has sailed on to the other world. He had a heart attack in his van on the lake street peace bridge at around 3pm on Friday, Oct. 2nd. He was surely an extraordinary person and to say he will be missed is probably the biggest understatement I’ve ever uttered.
peace, Maren

View a photo gallery from Loren’s Floatilla on Lake Hiawatha on October 4.

Visit lorenkellen.com for more info

Rah Kojis is the founder and director of Inflammati Fire Circus, and has worked as the BareBones Halloween Fire Section Designer for several years.

Lighting Director, Halloween 2009

Visiting Artist, BareBones Halloween Show 2009

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. She has recently worked with the Barebones Halloween Show, the MayDay staff at In the Heart of the Beast, and Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont. 

Visit Lindsay’s Blog