It's time to put on makeup! It's time to light the lights!

So Who is Aram Chaos? opened, and despite my personal doubts that folks would take the ride with us, they most certainly did.

It was very well received. A crowd of friends and fellow Sparkers asked very good questions that didn't involve, "What the hell was that?".
We now have the rest of this week to take some of their thoughts into account, polish, and present again on Saturday.

We're going to focus on toning down the shrillness of Ileana's character and on cleaning up an ending that some felt was a little muddy.
We may also reshoot some of the video portions of the show such that folks feel that we've made a stronger choice.

We have a sprinkling of video monologues throughout the show shot in the wider world, in contrast to the stark isolation of the rest of the show. Very deliberately a place outside the world of the play. It can either be read as the characters in a prior life, or simply as the actors delivering commentaries (I think they work either way) but the audience seemed to want stronger choices out of the video.

Aside from the surprise that I felt at the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the show the two most interesting things that I'm taking away from this weekend are:

1. I'm a little amazed that there are no clunkers. There aren't any horrifically bad shows among the 5 theatre teams. I honestly never would have expected that no one would fail. No one did. Go us. Gamers don't let us down!
   
   
2. It is very surprising to me that even in an environment when our only connection was theatre, where we were all involved doing the same exact thing it was really odd to see folks from the "office" doing their thing. Because we had never sat in on other teams' rehearsals nor read their scripts there was an odd disconnect. So seeing the guys from the office next door doing a show was a little odd. No, I have no idea why.

Another busy week ahead though. We have a writer in Denver, a show to polish and a game presentation to raid. 3 more rehearsals, a show, and an awards ceremony and this whole thing is over. If time ever passes more quickly just shoot me.

And they're off!

The festival is officially underway as Frankenstein's Monster gamely kicked us off last night with "Google Me", a comedy about a married couples' need(?) for a jump start to they're sex life. An additional ten points go to Frank's (as we've been calling them) for having overcome a very late cast change (they lost their female lead ten days ago) and putting on a enjoyable night of theatre.

And if it's indicative of the shows that are going up, we're going to stick out like a gangrenous thumb.

I fully expected the festival to be half comedies and half bitter political commentary. Even without knowing what Aristophanes, Wisconsins show is about and not having read Sidewalk Chalks I can tell you that we're not going to get half. "Handgrenade Holly" does have some light political underpining but that's not really what the show is about.

We on the other hand do muck about in politics, with a half cup of media criticism, and a pint or two of religious satire. And some songs. And some mostly unrelated video commentaries. So. Yeah.

I was impressed by the level of audience comments after the show, and I am both terrified and excited to see what people have to say about this particular stew.

Game on.

The Story So Far...

NEW MARS CITY AND THE YEARS OF THE REVOLUTION.

Within a generation of its foundation, the mining colony of New Mars City is a corrupt and riven colony. Ruled over by the Earth Administration in league with Corporate Interests, the underclass is seething, desperate for a say in their world.

Into this mix comes Aram Chaos, an obscure musician who’s breakthrough album, “Mars Awakened”, strikes a chord in the masses and moves some to instigate a peaceful intifada against the cancerous Combine.

In a breathtaking over-reaction, the Administration forcefully targets Aram Chaos as a terrorist, hoping to stem the uprising before it begins. He is accused of killing the US President and warrants are released for his arrest – dead or alive.

Far from suppressing the uprising, the underclasses rise up in violence, riding on the crest of Aram’s stirring and controversial songs. But where is he? Nobody – not the Administration nor the Revolution - can find him.

Aram Chaos is gone.

Instead of fading away, Aram is claimed by both sides, becoming Hero & Villain. Depending on whom you listen to his exploits become grander, crueler, vainer or more noble, with each passing year that the Revolution drags on.

He is attributed with siring a million babies, collaborating with rock legends and resurrecting the dead. His music and words are dissected and re-examined ad-nauseum.

Unwittingly he spawns a religion, a war and a multi billion dollar memorabilia industry.

Many claim to be Aram – crackpots, losers and attention seekers – but none are convincing for long.

Some say he never existed, that Aram Chaos is an elaborate piece of Administration propaganda used as an excuse to crush dissent. Others, that he is a true folk hero of uncompromising integrity who has successfully eluded the Administration for almost 20 years.

Regardless, the War drags on.

Leftover Grouse

And of course because there was grouse, I will step back up to the microphone to admit that dress rehearsal was an awful lot of fun, even nine days out. InfP is truly blessed to have as capable and involved a technical staff as we do (Thank you again to Bon, Derrick, Micheala and Austin). There are still a couple of technical bits in the oven, and we, the performers, were a little over-amped and under-committed (and on book). But being on stage is fun. Period. If you don't have fun when you're out there it's time to stop moonlighting.

We will have a show.

Some of it will work. Some of it won't.
But it's all ours. What fails and what succeeds was all come by fairly.
You can still trace most of it directly back from the page to the walls.

We hope to have room to put the walls up at the theater, so that when you come to the show you too can trace the elements and where they came from.

And tonight for dinner... Overboiled Grouse!

This has been a very interesting process without a doubt.
But there are times when the framework of the festival simply doesn't benefit the product.

I don't think that having the technical rehearsal last week hurt the final product at all. In fact, I think it was very useful as it gave us a chance to see and be in the space, and it allowed us to see where we needed to shore up some elements on the production side. It'd be pretty difficult for that not to be helpful.

But I'm going to take my diva moment and say, point blank, having the dress rehearsal nine days out isn't helpful.

Dress rehearsal is for the actors. The tech operators get another shot at the show, but it's the actor's time to really stretch out the show in its environment with everything intact, and no (or, in the case of an invited dress, relaxed) pressure of an audience's expectations. But that's not what we're getting.

In case I didn't mention it somewhere above, we have our dress rehearsal tonight. We open on June 2nd.

We've made a lot of progress. We're finding the rhythms of the show. We're finding good, solid, specific personal movement, and we're crawling toward being off book. Speaking only for myself, I think it's very disruptive to have dress now. We have to break our momentum in creation to have a mock presentation. It will be on book. We won't be able to stretch our legs because we're still shackled.

There isn't a fix. This isn't a problem that can be fixed. The ArtSpark festival folks need to get 5 shows through a dress process in time to open the presentations next Thursday. Someone has to go early. I guess I'm just disappointed it has to be us.

The Poster

Bad Blogger... No Pizza

Ten days in ArtSpark time is a lot. Really it's like leaving a young child alone for a week or two, they've grown noticeably when you see them again.

Since last we spoke Team Infinite Perspectives took an Austin Ballet imposed week off.
2/3's of the team being committed to other Art for the week, we went dark.
Which is what every show on a deadline really needs.

It gave us time to handle some of the technical elements in the time we normally would have been rehearsing. And work we did.
Draft 12 in hand we set forth to create the graphical, audio, and video moments of the show.

We found that it's very difficult to build those elements by yourself when you really need consensus to create a unified feel to the show. There's been quite a bit of trial and error on the graphical and audio portions.

On Thursday, Illy and I got together with the Foundation Film Squad (the Filmies) and shot our video moments for the show. This was a considerable amount of fun. Cliff and Aaron (Rhea not being available) took us for a little walk out back of the ArtSpark Compound and delivered us unto a park that apparently lives out there. We selected several shots that we thought fit the 'openness' that Dewey and Martin had requested as a contrast to the starkness of our on-stage world.

And we proceeded to shoot our monologues again and again and again. The Filmies were amazingly accommodating and we got several different looks and location for each monologue, so that Martin had something to choose from upon his return.




I myself created some of the graphics for projection during the show, and a couple of montages like so:


Oh but we haven't hit the capper my friends.
Only in ArtSpark.

With the show only mostly blocked we had our tech rehearsal last night.
You heard me.
We had our tech rehearsal last night.
Two weeks out from the show, one week from dress.

And you know what? It was 400% better than it ever should have been.

As an actor I've been through some excruciating tech rehearsals. Just hour after hour of bitchy turf wars and status games layered on top of gross inefficiency.
Not here son.
Slated to begin at 6:00, we actually got really rolling at about 6:45.
We got in 2 full cue-to-cues, blocked the cooking show scene, did notes, struck and were outta there by 10:30.
With no bitchiness. I didn't see a single person run out of the space crying.
Major kudos go out to Bon, Derrick, Michaela, Austin, Martin and ArtSpark staffers Doug and Chad. If all theatre were that straight forward we might all still have hair (well I might anyway).

So now all that's left to do?
Fill the holes we haven't yet in the technical side. (Clay has yet to shoot his monologues, and we have some audio to rework and some graphics yet to create or tweak)

And Clay, Illy and I need to fill out this show with our performances.
Two weeks.
We're on it.

And then the Aliens showed up...

Draft 10 arrived and it was good.

And then Dan Fields reappeared to help us out.

Mr. Fields had presented a workshop earlier in this process and was able to come in and give the festival a week of hands-on help with whatever happened to be ailing them.



He had the privilege and honor of sitting through the first reading of Draft 10, the draft soon to be known as the former final draft.
The good news? We told the story appropriately. He understood the narrative. So point for the good guys.

The bad news is that we got the theatrical equivalent of a 'see me after class'. We asked for notes and he gently said that he'd give them to Dewey

He sat with Dewey for 45 minutes after the reading.

Without beer.

Not surprisingly it made an impact. There are only so many times you can see someone make the confused face before you get nervous. And (for the click averse) if the person making the confused face has big names on his resume you get that extra little bit nervous.

Dewey got nervous.

He wrote Draft 11 in 8 hours.
Draft 11 of course being a complete retelling of the story in a wildly different style. Impressive really. The show went from being "The Life of Brian: A Rock Star's Tale" to being "No Exit: Mars" in eight hours.

It wasn't what we were looking for for the show, but it showed very clearly what worked and what didn't in a straight linear version of the show, allowing us to be honest about what was working. It also show a much lighter touch with dialog in and amongst the polemic we've (where we = Dewey) woven throughout.

Which meant that the NEXT day Draft 10 ate Draft 11 and became what it ate. Keeping the bigger, more 'theatrical' elements of Draft 10, and the defter dialog from Draft 11.
Which by my math makes Draft 12 "No Exit from the Life of Brian on Mars".

Which may not be high art... but I'm pretty sure you haven't seen that show before.

If we're going to fail?
We're going to fail in technicolor.

Spreading the moos

I wanted to share the first part of a feature written by a member of one of the game teams at ArtSpark, Mr. Greg Wilson.

It's well written, but I admit I am most driven to share by the fact that he includes a picture of Moo-tisse in his article.

I was on Greg's team on that first night so long ago.

Moo-tisse rules.

[Bon Jovi Lyric referring to having traveled 50% of the distance]

I am an inveterate fiddler. (Note: not the instrument)

I'll go to say, Dell's website, and kill time putting together the most expensive system I can manage.
Or the least expensive.
I'll fire up a video game and mess with the settings until all the physics of the game have been busted to hell.

I am the person the 'restore to default' button was created for.

So in a lot of ways this process is right up my alley. I get to beta test version after version of the text I'll be performing before getting caught on stage by an audience. Which I suppose is at its core an actors dream. To be able to say point blank (at an appropriate time no less) that a line of text isn't working for you, that you're unsure as to the motivation of the line, or that 'my character wouldn't do that' is gold. And it's not "whining", it's my job!

Unfortunately it also means that it's my responsibility. From here on in, with Draft 10 - likely the most final draft before we beat the hell out of the text in rehearsal - having come down Saturday night, I have I have to sell it. I have to own it. I have no excuses. That's pretty daunting.

There's also some wistfulness as we come down to the One True Script. There are forms and scenes and dialog that I miss.
For a minute there in Draft 9.3 I was a hero.
Up through Draft 8 we had a completely bizarre political satire wrapped in a wrestling scene.

Think about that.
Then realize that it was Ileana and I wrestling,
and I have roughly 80 pounds on her.

It was a lot of fun. But Dewey (and the whole team) has an obligation to tell the story we've decided to tell arrived at.
So a lot of those fun bits had to go. And we miss them.

But we've found new fun bits. We fit in not one but TWO songs. We've found some nice places to work in some video projections between 'real' scenes to add another layer to some pretty static staging.

You always love the child you've got, no matter what you dreamed.

Monday Night

Days off make Travis something something...

It also gives some space to think about what ArtSpark is and what ArtSpark could become.

---

ArtSpark now functions as a small, almost improvisational, incubator. The restrictions in place to make sure that you are starting your process in conjunction with the festival, and that you not use props or set in order to keep focused on the story and the telling of it are useful. The time restrictions add a sense of urgency. I think it's a very solid concept.

But what COULD it be in five years?

In his goodbye post Scott Walters over at Theatre Ideas in the course of summing up his theatre manifesto states:

"That theatre is a local, not a national experience, and so there should be a difference between theatre in different parts of the country. Artists should be a part of the community in which they live, and create theatre that speaks to the people in their theatres, not some imagined "national audience."

I think this is exceptionally true (that's right - I'm ignoring truth's binary nature).

Too often in creating a work we deal in its imagined Greatest State. It's going to be produced in all the Regionals and get sent up to Broadway (or juuuust Off). We're afraid that in making something relevant to our smaller community we are limiting its Greatest State. Which is just silly. The Greatest State of most scripts is mailbox hopper, or workshop warrior. The percentage of scripts that make it so far as even a rigorous workshop is very low. So why begin the process by worrying about it's National Marketablility? I don't know.

Here's where something like ArtSpark (or its descendants) could readily step in. A Room of Ones' Own and a group of dedicated fellow travelers are a huge jump over the baby stumbling blocks that derail most fledgling writers (or even more advanced writers) - Separation from Real Life, and an outside sense of urgency to keep it moving. Writing for yourself in your spare time is one thing, writing for a group on a deadline (no matter what that deadline is) is a completely different kettle of fish.

It also means that you (the writer) have to rely on your voice, and your team's voice rather than trying to build a more synthetically complex intellectualized voice.

If you take a team of 6 from Austin and lock them in a room you are going to get an Austin play, with an Austin voice. Even with a team comprised of folks from New England, Australia, and South Dakota along with your Austin-ites, after all nothing is more Austin than an artistic leaning transplant. Extend the time limit to 6 months with a public workshop production at the halfway mark and you have a full fledged local talent incubator. Something that could ensure the focus on truth-in-process that is important to Mr. Zarate while hatching a polished product.

The ankle bone's connected to the....

So.

Here we are wrapping up the fourth week of the 2006 ArtSpark Festival.
I think that collectively the urgency level hasn't yet raised to a level of worry, and I can say definitively that it hasn't for Team Infinite Perspectives. We've spent the last week or so primarily back in the office trying to piece the show together from the pages Dewey has brought us.

Or as I told ArtSpark Staffer Matt last night: playing Tetris with pudding.

Any (successful) show has a basic logical form. Even a non-linear show has a workable logic. But they have logic because the pieces they have are solid. They are created, are 'real' and then you work out the logic and piece it together in the most effective way possible.

We have lots of pieces, but they're still a bit runny in the middle, and we have pieces yet to come that we have to plan for in the logic we have created for the show.

Something that Martin brought up when we were talking about things we liked in theatre (as we move on a more transparently useful conversation to have had) was a love of the "arbitrary, but not arbitrary for arbitrary's sake". He wanted shows to adhere to the logic they had created in their own world.

I can say without reservation that there are large swathes of arbitrary in this show. But we have created a framework, a logic, for the show that allows for it. Even encourages it.

So we have found a logic that allows us to include many of the things we like in theatre from that self-same early discussion . The political without abandoning the entire show to polemics, the arbitrary without annoying the audience, songs, slapstick, in retrospect I really think that we've created an insular modern Commedia Dell'Arte. We have our three characters (Clay, Illy and myself) who have a defined set of characteristics, and then we play with and against types in a variety of scenaria.

And those characters' details are being drawn in increasingly clearer lines. Which is always healthy for paranoid actors to see (hi Mom *waves*).

Last night, with Dewey unavailable, we took the opportunity to beat the hell out of a few of the shorter 'framing story' scenes.

Oh and we did.

We worked those scenes of a combined 3 pages for two hours.
We managed to strip away a lot of the traditional 'first rehearsals' overacting bloat and get to some meat. With very little space to move (our restrictions, not ArtSpark's) there is a lot of tension built physically which gets transferred nicely to a lot of the text.

It also allowed us to see that scenes which we had thought were going to need cutting instead can be flushed out with discussion of the ideas that we really want to talk about.

For example, in one of last night's scenes, the Cynic and the Romantic are discussing the need for and the benefits of change, even change for change's sake. The scene is playing quickly enough that we're going to be able to flush that out into a broader discussion between the two to the benefit of all, even those of us who chant through that entire scene.

---

I think on the whole things are progressing very well. The group is as committed as any you could ask for, unafraid of working hard, and turning out a decent product through that work. We are no longer ahead of pace, but we are on pace I think...and I think the pace we planned on is a touch aggressive, so all to the good.

Bambi Unleashed

There are little awkward spurts in every production process. Adolescent gangliness takes over for a night, or a week.

In a traditional process these are most evident in two places: the very first night on your feet in rehearsal, and the first night completely off book.

We reached the first of those milestones last night.

After a short presentation on 'selling yourself' by Mr. Matt Walton. Team Infinite Perspectives hit the rehearsal space for the very first time.

The floor was taped out in our proposed VERY SMALL triangular configuration, and we began.

Martin led us in some basic sun salutations as a warm up and we began improvising with the three basic character shells we've been talking about for the last ten days or so.

Wow it felt good to be on our feet.

The minutiae of creating a world, and exploring a style for your universe is fun, but how can that compare to living in it? It can't. Of course it being the awkward newborn fawn level of performance it was like living in a complex universe as a toddler, but it was living.

Martin has a deep and abiding (and justified) love of opposites. Both in writing and in performance. So we played with that quite a bit as he guided us through the improvisation, asking lots of questions of our still very timid characters.

We mixed and matched characters, swapping in and out of genders, much to Martin's chagrin. He had been very upfront with his feeling that things weren't quite so locked down as that, but there we were anyway, treating our brainstorming as gospel, and assigning our preconceptions to these thin soap bubbles.

Immediately after Illy cracked me up with me with some bastardized monkish aphorism, we broke up the improvisation as Dewey had slipped into the room with some pages.
Real honest to goodness pages... with lines on them!

We immediately moved on to playing with the framework we'd been handed, still swapping in and out of characters and with Martin pushing us to try opposites wherever possible to find the layers of this world.

It's only a step of course, and not even that large a step from where we were on Monday all things considered.
But it felt very much like a state change, as we moved from solid to liquid.

Soldiering on:

The second week of ArtSpark ended for Team Infinite Perspectives with a few interesting realizations.

We are learning quickly (and well) how to create together.
I think that we have a pretty good feel for group strengths and weaknesses and, despite the new-ness of this group as an entity, a reasonable creative dynamic.
But two things stand out:

1. Due to conflicts and vacations et al, prior to last night the group had never been in the same room together. Ever. So we don't have a GROUP dynamic, we have a multiplicity of INTERPERSONAL dynamics depending on the configuration that is in the room on any given night.


2. We respect each other, and have no problem building on one another's ideas and thought processes. There has been a surprising amount of group synthesis given our lack of history, but we have no idea how to disagree with one another.

It's amazing how such a seemingly simple thing can be so difficult.
But none of us have ever been involved in something quite like this.
There is quite a bit of distance between the ArtSpark process and the normal state of creation of a production.

In a 'normal' production the writer is well out of the way by the time an actor shows up. They've done their creation in the Cave, done some workshopping, and may pop in to move some scenes around or make some cuts. But they're home.

A director then pops in and takes the writer's vision and synthesizes it with their own.

Which is the vision that is presented to the designers when they are brought on board to add their spice to the stew.

The last piece is the performers, who generally get very little say in the overall themes of the piece, and instead become the medium through which the 'creative team' communicates their vision.

But not in ArtSpark, nosiree Fred.

Here we're all in The Room (of our own). So roles change, and they're not roles that we're used to.
So the positive encouragement is there as we try not to crush any beneficial impulse, but how to say no to a group you're not used to working with is trickier.

Saying no to a close friend in the creative process can be tricky, saying no to a stranger? Without defined roles?
Super tricky.

So we have successfully laid out a wide array of conceptual paints to slap around our canvas.
But the tricky part has arrived as we have to begin telling one another no.

Off to a rolling jog

You've done 'team building exercises'. I know you have.

Well then reminisce with me:
There's a team building exercise that is a bit more convoluted than it seems at first glance.
Your team is tethered together and then instructed to complete an obstacle course.
Should be easy of course, but simple things like finding enough room to make all you limbs move properly are made more difficult by having to negotiate that space with someone who is tied to you.

ArtSpark is very much like that.
And on Friday night it felt very much like we negotiated that creative space and set off on a jog in a direction we all liked.

Friday night was a 10:30 meeting and the five of six who were available were all pretty tired. Ileana (who does in fact exist!) was coming from a show, and Dewey from work.

But it was a consolidation day.

It was the type of meeting where the ideas flow and you're pointing to another member of the group because the idea you're elucidating speaks to something they had been saying at some point in these last two weeks.

Dewey hadn't been able to make the Wednesday meeting (which featured a very nice homemade kahlua from Clay) and so began by going over the fifteen longhand pages he had accumulated since venting. There was a lot of synchronicity thematically with what we had been discussing at the Wednesday meeting. A lot of mistaken identity, misdirection and rejected personal narrative.

We bantered quite a bit in that hour and a half about ways to to manipulate the audience. Manipulate emotionally. Manipulate physically. Manipulate by any means necessary. We talked about what we wanted the form of the show to take.

We talked about crafting atmospheric music, an atmospheric radio show for preshow.
We talked about radically scaling down the acting space and making it VERY intimate... to manipulate the audience...


And let it be said that this was the meeting during which we agreed to add Aram Chaos to the team.
Who is Aram Chaos?

Aram Chaos is our seventh son of the seventh son.
Or daughter.
Mother, Father
Rock N' Roll Revolutionary
On Mars, or in your backyard, or at The Backyard.

Wanted. Hunted.

He Started the Revolution and now no one can find him.

Never mind the bollocks
here is Aram Chaos.

Baby Steps

Is there anything in the artistic world more daunting than a blank piece of paper?

For my money? No sir.

And a (several large) blank piece(s) of paper is what faced us at the first (almost) full meeting of Team Infinite Perspectives.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
Like any good bank heist, folks were brought on board for a reason (or in my case the late date and lack of other options)

Travis: Your current narrator - a performer
Martin: The Director
Dewey: The Writer
Austin: The Stage Manager - Keeper On Task
Ileana: Performer (and reputed Sound Goddess)
Clay: Performer

For the first (almost) full meeting we were all present save Ileana (Who I am assured is legendary, but not mythical).

Martin installed 2+ walls full of butcher paper, Clay installed a newly resurfaced vintage card table and chairs and we set off to vanquish the blank page.



As a group, but not a company, there are some loose connections amongst folks (except for me of course) but no previous experience creating together.
So there are no vocabulary shortcuts we can take, we need to learn each other's strengths and predilections on the fly. To start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (unless of course you only have twelve weeks).

The First Words

Martin led us in a discussion of what we considered to be our formative theater experiences, favorite performances, and loves in theater to get an idea of what moved us as artists.

Which tended group-wide to be non-traditional experiences:

For myself I began with my love of manipulating an audience.
I shared the tense moments at the end of a college production of Jeffrey I directed at the University of New Hampshire, waiting for the applause, sweating through the silence, only to realize that they were too busy crying to clap just yet.

I then talked about a performance by the Neo-Surrealists at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. A performer clad in nothing but his clown makeup and a Hefty bag shares his Last Hershey Bar with the audience silently, piece by piece. Upon running out of chocolate he then hands the next audience member the wrapper, and the next his (now sweaty) garbage bag.
Now totally naked and bereft of anything to give, the clown begins removing his makeup with is fingertips and badging the faces of the rest of the audience.
Watching an audiences reaction to this performance is astounding, as they move from laughter, to pity, to horror and discomfort, to an acceptance or even pride in the badging.

Not to disrespect the others but only a sampling as I don't remember their formative experiences as well as my own:

Martin talked about a variety of experiences, primarily guerrilla theater and street theater, that had really excited him. He spoke of a love of non-traditional spaces, and concurred with my enjoyment of audience manipulation (though he leaned Brecht to my Spielberg). He spoke of his respect for Peter Brook's process of creation which he had witnessed several years ago in Australia in one of Brooks touring productions.

Dewey talked about the lack of exposure in general in South Dakota, and later about his love of his Grandfather's barbershop quartet which toured the area. About how hearing them sing, and seeing them perform stoked his love of music, and made him curious about performing and performance.

Clay spoke on his love for street theater and happenings.

Austin talked about his work with a dance company and the love of the aesthetic that grew out of that.

Ileana said, "............"

The next steps:



The Spark.

That which we expected to narrow our scope was instead a mammoth, unconnected swath of thinking. So we began brainstorming the concepts. Mars especially seemed to dominate because it is a specific place. We also listened a bit to some of the songs included in the Spark packet (Gang of Four, Pere Ubu, Orange Juice, The Human League, others).

Love Music Mars Love Music Mars Love Music Mars Love Music Mars.

And what is theater?
And where in history do we want this to take place?
Do we want it to be linear? Non-Linear? A-Linear?

How do we turn the limitations on sets and props (where limitations = you can't have any) into an advantage?
How can we manipulate the space to manipulate the audience?
Do we want to use projections? How?

You know, little questions.

12 Weeks.

In the Beginning...

My name is Travis Bedard.

I am an actor who relocated to Austin Texas 18 months ago.

I am an actor who 2 1/2 weeks ago received a phone call from a stranger named Dewey.
Not a stranger stranger, rather an acquaintance of my girlfriend.

Dewey is a theatre professional who had a problem.
He had registered for a program called ArtSpark, and he had some members of his intended team drop out.
Mr girlfriend had mentioned that I was an actor and would I be interested in joining Team Infinite Perspectives?

And lo, I was interested and found myself in a room with forty other people including my 'team' on Monday the 20th, set to embark on a very ambitious journey.

Here we will try to record our process, the heart of ArtSpark, for all to see.
Shortly I will let the Team introduce itself but first? The basics:

What is ArtSpark?
Taken from the ArtSpark mission statement: "The ArtSpark Initiative mission is to promote the creative process and explore synergies among the Arts, Technology and Industry. ArtSpark programs seek to nurture, develop, and provide professional benefit to emerging artists and innovators, to build connections with industry and to give the community a first look at the future of the entertainment arts and technology."

Taken from meeting with the Teams and the Staff? It's Art for Art's sake. And just a little bit crazy.
Beginning with the meeting on the 20th the Teams have 12 weeks to create a new work, in theatre, games, or industrial design. The ArtSpark organization supplies the Teams with:
a small budget ($700)
office space and equipment, with 24 hour access
rehearsal space
performance space
event level marketing
workshops with industry professionals
support
and a license to fail spectacularly.

The soft pudding-y middle of art in the modern world is squarely due to artists need to eat. For art to be financially feasible it needs to be appealing to the broader market. It may drift to one edge or another - but to innovate, or even to strive for innovation, is financially disastrous.

So Manuel Zarate in creating the the HBMG Foundation and ArtSpark has created a mad artists laboratory, a place to focus on how you create the art, not simply how shiny it is when you're finished.
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To ensure that the program is for pure creation the organization insists that each group start from scratch with nothing but their own abilities, they must start from the Spark.

So what was your Spark?
Completely different from what we'd expected.

I'd jokingly said to Dewey at the meeting where he brought me on board that the Spark was going to be "beagle". That we were going to have to steer an entire play from inspiration to performance based on nothing more than one word.

I couldn't possibly have been more wrong.

ArtSpark staffer Matt Cornelius as he was about to hand out the Sparks on the 20th said, "I hope the Sparks don't melt your brain", after seeing what each of the groups had spun out of simpler prompts at the introductory meeting. He couldn't have been more prescient.

We were handed a manila envelope marked "top secret", and headed down to our office to unveil the Spark.
To discover three FOLDERS worth of Spark.
To break it down thematically: Love (especially love in the modern era), Mars, and Music (especially punk music).

Which is to say considerably broader than 'beagle'.

NEXT: First (Almost) full meeting!