Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop

Ty Chapman is a multiracial author, poet and puppeteer of Nigerian and European descent. He has been creating art with social justice themes in the Twin Cities for many years, and is passionate about creating art that speaks to the Black experience in America. Lately, Ty has focused on editing his children’s books, refining his collection of poetry, and performing his one-man shadow puppet show online.

Andrew Young (he/they) is a Taiwanese-Indonesian-American puppeteer, artist and educator based in Minneapolis. They received their puppeteer training through Monkeybear's Harmolodic workshop, a local BIPOC-centered puppetry organization, and has since worked for Mayday and Barebones as a staff artist, as well as the Full Moon Puppet Show in various roles. They have performed shows at Heart of the Beast and Open Eye Figure Theater, were a part of the inaugural cohort of “Our Space is Spoken For,” and are an educator at Mia. As a part of their work, Andrew is interested in collaboration and community building, exploring the natural world, and aiming light toward mental health and our inner worlds. Lately they have been examining what it means to be a POC artist, and what role artists have, in the midst of a pandemic and a global uprising that began in the city they call home.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (enrolled Maya-Lenca tribal citizen, El Salvador) is a Twin Cities-based contemporary artist and musician (Lady Xøk) whose work is rooted in Latinx Indigenous futurisms. Her interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, puppetry and public art) often speaks from a perspective of Liberation Theology about interconnectedness, shared, and erased histories of the Americas.