INSTRUCTORS

Eva Barr

Founder / Co-Director / Core Performance

A native of Albert Lea, MN, Eva Barr is an organic farmer and independent theatre artist now living on DreamAcres Farm outside Wykoff. Having graduated from Northwestern University in 1988 and subsequently co-founded Lookingglass Theatre Company of Chicago, she took off to really learn something of the world through further study, travel, and experience.  Curiosity took her to farms and families in Central America, Europe, and Africa, and brought her back to Minnesota to establish DreamAcres with her partner, Todd Juzwiak, her two sons, Chester and Stanley, and numbers of other worthy hands over the years.  Flourish Summer Camp in Arts and Agriculture, est. 2003, is an outgrowth of Barr's passion for grappling with (seeking to more deeply understand) the project of being a human being on this planet physically through theatre/performance work and growing food.  She sees performance work as fuel for the spirit, and vegetables as food for the body, both essential.  Flourish manifests all that she would have desired in a summer camp...and each summer the camp reveals itself to be more than she'd ever imagined.

Malia Burkhart

Masks and Puppetry

Malia Burkhart is a Multi-disciplinary Performance Artist, Singer-Songwriter / Musician, Visual Artist, Somatic Massage Therapist, and Arts-Educator. She lives, works, creates, and organizes in Minneapolis, MN.

Dustin Haug

Dance

Dustin Haug grew up in southern Minnesota and attended St. Olaf College. Although he was very active in the dance department and spent a good deal of time studying chemistry, he earned a BA in Visual Art in 2000. He move to Seattle, WA after graduation and began working with KT Niehoff’s lingo dance theater in 2002, creating and performing in several evening-length works, including Speak to Me, Relatively Real, and Inhabit. In the summer of 2007, Dustin moved back home to Minnesota. Locally, he has shown his own work at The Walker Art Center’s Choreographer’s Evening, Zenon’s Dance Zone, Choreographer’s Evening at the Ritz, Bryant Lake Bowl, and SPCPA’s Evening of Dance. He has also had the pleasure of working with numerous local choreographers such as Body Cartography Project, Rosy Simas Danse, Patrick Scully, Maggie Bergeron and Dancers, and Chris Schlicting. Dustin joined Mathew Janczewski’s ARENA DANCES in 2013 to create and perform in the evening-length work The Main Street Project. He has taught modern dance and contact improvisation at Zenon Dance School since 2008.  He is also a licensed public high school teacher working at St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists (SPCPA) where he has taught dance, chemistry, and physics and is the academic coordinator.

Masanari Kawahara

Movement

Masanari Kawahara is a performer, educator, and Butoh practitioner who incorporates puppetry, mask, and movement into his work. Recent theater works include Speechless by The Moving Company as an actor; Immigrant Journey Project with Theater Mu as the lead artist; and The Oldest Boy by Jungle Theater as a puppeteer/actor/designer/builder. Also with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, he collaborated on Make Believe Neighborhood, The Story of Crow Boy and Queen. Other notable work includes the solo show Little Boy commissioned by Pangea World Theater’s Alternate Vision series. Masanari is currently a resident teaching artist at Pillsbury House + Theatre and teaching artist for Upstream Arts working with preschoolers to elders. He is a member of the Butoh group Nenkin Butoh Dan, which received a 2015 Sage Award for outstanding dance ensemble for Fu.Ku.Shi.Ma. Masanari Kawahara is a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow (2010-2011, and 2018-2019).

Kelly Jo Haug

Music and Voice

Kelly Jo Haug is a lifelong musician who studied vocal music at Luther College. She sings and plays the piano, ukulele, and enjoys writing music. She lives in Saint Paul, MN with her husband and 6-year-old daughter. She spends her days as a paraprofessional at Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and as a birth Doula in the Twin Cities.

Stan Juzwiak

Improvisation 

Stan grew up on Dreamacres and participated in Flourish all through his youth before studying improv at The Second City in Chicago. He now coaches and performs with improv teams in minneapolis and works in the field where music and videography meet.

Nikhil Barr Saxena

Music 

Nikhil Saxena has been a musician and Flourish participant for many years. He has experience performing and working with choirs, a cappella groups, rock bands, and other assorted musical ensembles. He writes and produces original music in the twin cities and attends Flourish each year to teach music and songwriting. Nikhil plays guitar, ukulele, bass guitar, clarinet, as well as various other musical instruments and gladly helps campers develop instrumental and musical skills.

Robyn Char

Storytelling

Robyn Char is a performer, educator, and nature-lover in the Twin Cities. During the school year, she teaches 3rd grade in Northeast Minneapolis, and during the summer she directs and choreographs with Youth Performance Company's theatre camps. Throughout it all, she loves to make time for adventures with her partner, Fawkes, and their 2 rescue pups. This will be Robyn's 6th summer at Flourish, and she looks forward to the fresh air, joyful art-making, and community that Flourish brings. Robyn teaches Storytelling at Flourish and believes that this most instinctual form of communication and performance provides every camper with the opportunity to use their authentic voice to create something beautiful. 

Oogie Push

Core / Storytelling

Oogie Push is Meskwaki from Tama, Iowa currently creating on Dakota Territory, also known as the Twin Cities. She is an actor, dancer, storyteller, Meskwaki twine bag weaver, content creator, and the Video Production Apprentice for Z Puppets Rosenschnoz. This Fall she will be performing in PASSAGE at Pillsbury House + Theatre.

Mankwe Ndosi

Formative Staff

Mankwe Ndosi is a Song Maker, Culture Worker and Wild Plant Woman — working in live sound, performance and embodied social practice to nurture our connection to each other, our ancestors, and our earth. She uses texture, rhythm, utterance, and harmony to make music with artists of all genres, and living beings human, animal and elemental — expressing emotion, story, and spirit — personal, social, and terrestrial.

Ms. Ndosi’s 20 years of creative community work has included program development, design, facilitation, teaching, hosting festivals and non-profit leadership. She uses creativity as both product and process/method - building relationship from essence, imagination, challenge, and compassion. Mankwe has been teaching at Flourish for most years since 2005 and is honored and pleased to act as Co-Director for this ambitious, compassionate and transformative camp on Dakota land.