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!