MayDay Festival on May 7

BY MIKE MORIARITY

Sixteen years ago, Shelley Chinander made a wonderful discovery. She walked over the crest of a hill overlooking Powderhorn Lake and saw much more than just the other side of the hill.
What she saw made her feel like she was on a vision trip. She gazed upon a lavish scene of colorful characters, props and streamers all moving to the beat of homemade drums and the melody of homemade horns and xylophones.

“Where did this all come from?” Chinander thought.
The musical sounds and the cheers of the crowd of at least 30,000 led her to Powderhorn Park where the annual MayDay Parade and Festival was culminating in the Tree of Life Ceremony. A giant red and yellow sun was floating across the lake with a fantastic flaming red flotilla to awaken the Tree of Life from its winter slumber.

“It was the last thing I expected to see,” said Chinander, now 43. “I knew right then that I needed to move to this neighborhood. It was exactly the kind of community I had been looking for.”

Less than a year later Chinander bought a house in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood, five blocks from In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, where all of the preparation for the MayDay Parade and Festival takes place.

From April 8 to May 4, the theater’s seats are removed and the entire building is turned into a community art studio. Workshops held every Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday are free and open to everyone who wishes to help create the costumes, puppets, musical instruments and staged shows of the parade and festival. This year the parade, which usually includes about 1,000 participants, and accompanying festival will be on Sunday, May 7, beginning at 1 p.m.
In the Heart of the Beast artists and other volunteers and contract artists make themselves available to help people of all ages lend a hand in the community workshop, which is attended by 50 to 100 people each day.
Chinander has been sewing costumes for the event for 10 years. On April 8 she was beginning to make stilt costumes for a 7-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister.

A 7-year-old on stilts?

“Sure!” Chinander said. “I had my daughter on stilts by the time she was 3.”

Tova Breen, 7, and her sister Shira, 10, are going to be celestial stars in the MayDay Parade. Tova will be walking with 2-foot-6-inch stilts and Shira will be walking with 3-foot stilts.

“It’s not that hard,” Shira says. “We’ve both been on stilts for two and a half years.”

In the theater lobby, others were making clay molds of monstrous heads, then using papier-mâché to make masks from the molds. In the theater, many others were painting cardboard cutouts of different sorts and experimenting with turning common household objects into musical instruments. The smell of paint and glue filled the theater. Laughter, words of encouragement and excitement and the occasional testing of drums and horns filled the ears. All sorts of people, young and old, made trips from the molding and papier-mache area to the paint storage area to the main theater where all projects are finalized.

Stage Manager Leslie Zenz and Puppeteer Kevin Long are among those taking on one of the major challenges for this year. The final culminating Tree of Life Ceremony will involve two large twin puppets modeled after Japanese Bunraku puppets. Each needs to be operated by five professional puppeteers.

oordinating the logistics for the twins, which will each be about 10 feet tall, is the first challenge, and then they can get on with construction.
The workers rely on material and financial donations for the MayDay event. They use things like 5-gallon buckets and poster tubes for drums, and old clothes to curtains to tablecloths for fabric.

Each year’s event has a different theme. This year’s theme will be “The Time is Now,” and five other sections stem from this main theme and section: “The Time is Now, To Speak the Truth,” “...To Listen to the Heart Speak,” “...To Walk Hand in Hand,” “...To Check Out Our Common Wealth,” and “...To Regenerate with Gratitude Our Uproarious Energy.”

Immigration law, updates of the Minneapolis Public Library, educational tools and community togetherness have been inspirations for this year’s MayDay Parade and Festival.

“We’re starting in one place to discover what things need to be changed,” said Duane Tougas, who has been on staff at In the Heart of the Beast for 15 years and describes himself as the “unofficial tech director.”

The entire storyboard is on display at In the Heart of the Beast’s main entrance, and an artist will walk you through it upon your arrival to the workshop.
Everyone who is willing and loves the smell of paint and glue is invited to take part in the workshops, the parade and the ceremonies.

The workshop is located at In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, 1500 E. Lake St. in Minneapolis. Workshop dates run through May 4:
Saturdays: 9 – 11 a.m. and 1 – 3 p.m. Tuesdays: 7 – 9 p.m.
Thursdays: 7 – 9 p.m.

For more information, call In the Heart of the Beast Theatre at 612-721-2535 or visit www.hobt.org.