So I’m sitting here in my cubicle overlooking downtown Austin with Space Lion by Yoko Kanno piping into my right ear and the possibility of interruption sitting on my left. One of the nice things about customer service is that you can split off a piece of your brain to handle the phone and let the rest bound about at whatever degree of free you are currently able. So, I’m chatting with a friend about a comic book project. I’m ignoring a pile of work that is more or less surrounding me. I’m clicking on this link or that and scrolling through facebook giggling at memes or more likely, something Brenner has to say. Most of my brain is taken up with all the possible outcomes of my son’s preliminary asthma diagnosis and with just how much I love and miss my wife and how awkward we have been around one another lately. If you’ve been married long enough, eventually you get to go through a phase were you feel like roommates with opposite schedules. It’s weird and if not for the necessity of strength that the kiddo’s illness has provided it would almost certainly feel worse than it is. All this to say: the backdrop to my life has changed considerably in the last few days and so my meditation or reflection on the Fusebox that was in 2012 has been scattershot and skewed.
First let’s talk about happy accidents. In my first blog I averred to talk more this year and as luck would have it one of my first victims was Larry. What a great person to share any experience with. He’s an avid patron of the arts, patient, smart and funny. I can’t believe it took us this long to have a conversation or as Graham Schmidt would joke, “I’ve talked to Aaron more this week than I have since I met him.” Not only is that fair, it is totally accurate and a little bit sad, but I’m working on it. Eliza Bent of TCG was another delightful surprise. I’m not sure who was stalking who, but every time I turned around there she was again. We had the unofficial habit of meeting up before a show, then splitting up to experience it in different ways, then stumbling into each other again after the show or at the Hub. She seems a perfect mix between insight and excitement, between goofy and gracious, between artist and journalist. Things would have felt weird when she went back to NYC if Steve Ochoa hadn’t stepped up so admirably. Steve’s a dancer among other things and I don’t think I’d ever met him before. We went from awkward waves to one of the deepest conversations I had at the festival in just a couple of days. There were other connections. Meeting Hank Cathey and the guys from Culturebot was cool. (Hey Andrew and Jeremy, I was told there would be BBQ and pie. . .) Jeff, David, Doug, and the crew were always down for a little drinking or shop talk. Dani Pruit and I saw a couple of shows together by happy accident and it was cool to see her seeing things in this new way; not really from the outside, but certainly not as everywhere all the time as she has been before. Brad Carlin saved my butt several times during the week. I saw him defeat that Dos XX guy in rochambo, sending him limping away with the most interesting whimper in the world.  Timothy and Dusty were my pillars of strength and I am determined to have a beer with them and see a show just to prove him wrong. I saw fellow blogger Mark Gifford and his lovely wife Leigh almost as much as I saw anyone and they are hilarious and hardcore. Here’s hoping we get to hang out more too. I saw Will Dibrel all over and collided with Sonnet at just the right times. Cody was always ready with a drink and a smile. I met Cami and reconnected with Olivia from college. (I am beginning to realize this may be my anti-Sultan list, which is to say these are the people that I lived with this week. These are the folks who made my life better. It is undoubtedly incomplete because it is based on ym memory.) Sam and Dallas always ready to lend a hand, the unexpected joy of Robert Matney and Robert Faires, time alone with Brenner and Katherine, Ben Schave’s truth and the random Robert Fisher encounters, Michael, Abigail and 600 highwaymen, the collaboration of Steve Moore and Jenny Larson, the music of Adam, Peter and Graham, Brian Osborne’s smile, and the food . . . Lucky, I am still happy. I see many Puccias in my future.
Next let’s talk about the shows. This year it seemed like there were some very good pairings, for instance Soul Project/Dream Cabinet was a nice combination of shows that let you be inside the experience and roam the space. Wonderbaum and Gobsquad were brave, fun, upbeat and international. Graham and Lucky worked together (along with Hank and others) for an amazing Tarantula. Lone Star and Puccias were great garden fare. The Red Swing and Rebar Bubbleware worked together to bring out the kid in us. Toplessness and dancing exorcised the Fusebox demons. (That last one is just a rumor, but I choose to believe it and to imagine it went something like the party in the Matrix Reloaded.)
Inevitably some shows must rise to the top of your experience and I had my favorites. So here they are in no particular order:
The Coathangers
Dream Cabinet
Soul Project
Godsquad
Wonderbaum
House Party for Jesus
Lullacruza
William Shatner astericks
Foot Patrol
The Super Creeps
Tarantula
Todd Reynolds/Golden Hornet project
Red Swing and Rebar Bubbleware
When a Priest Marries a Witch
This Great Country

What were the criteria for these shows? Fun, an obvious buttload of talent, some great art choices, something that inspired or made me think or feel, and it had to be substantial or stick with me for more than a couple of days. All of these shows had these things and more in spades. There were other shows I liked a lot that did not make the list . . . sorry, my list. I think an argument could also be made that the Swing/Rebar combination was not a show and does not meet all criteria, but again, my list. I like them because they were well-used; they brought the kid out in a lot of folks and changed the tone and/or atmosphere of the interior of the Hub.
I have to say I missed dance this year. Last year seemed to be dripping with dance and though I saw some great dancing this year I didn’t see nearly as much. This year was much more about music and film which was a nice change. I also had a much more full food experience at the festival and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  One of the biggest successes in my opinion was the Hub. It was full, vibrant and inviting. It coaxed conversation while evoking a sense of fun and wonder. It also housed some serious dance party craziness and great art talks. All in all it is easily my favorite headquarters so far.

On the final night I was sitting at a picnic table with Steve Ochoa, Peter Stopschinski, a woman, and another musician who had I had not met. Peter and I hadn’t really talked before. The conversation was fun and wide ranging. People dropped in and out. We each added what we had to the mix. Sometimes another person would stop by and then bounce off toward home or another conversation. Sometimes someone would come and stay, but someone else would leave.  At each moment I tried to make note of the changing dynamic. When the topic was football, this person got quiet. When it turned to music these people stepped in. For a moment we talked about my bottom and how one of the pods had wet it down. All around us the Hub was full of people chatting away, doing their thing and then something changed. A couple of folks wanted beer and went their way, then someone feigned interest in a cell phone, before slipping off to a different circle. One by one the table emptied. Finally it was just me and the silence and I felt . . . wonderful sitting there in what I knew was a microcosm for my last twelve days. I took a moment to give our statue of jesus a nod and thanks. I took a slow panoramic view of the Hub, letting each face remind me of something special in my week. I gave myself one more second to see if the party would come back to me one more time, but I knew . . . This is how it should end for me; a touch of awkward with me as the self aware, grateful observer. So even though the party wasn’t over, I got up and went home.

Thanks again to everyone who made this week happen for me; family, friends, artists, and all. I am one lucky s.o.b. I’ll see you around or at very least, I’ll see you at #fusebox2013.

-Aaron Sanders

Here, we have a special remembrance of Fusebox 2012 with Colin Lowry.

At Phil Soltanoff’s “Panel Discussion” in last year’s Fusebox 2 actors with a camera and a video projector playing Ron Berry voiced by an actual Ron Berry said something like “I prefer to watch people do things on stage rather than watch people pretend to do things on stage.”  The audience applauded and I thought, OK then let’s all grab our pitchforks and torches march down and stop stage managers documenting blocking and actors learning lines.  We are so over having a beginning, middle, end, character development and a linear narrative thrust.  Audiences have gotsta stop projecting their own desires and expectations on to the performers.  End the masturbatory wish-fulfillment narcissistic madness!

My 2012 Fusebox experience – I went to 25 events – has been resonating with how liberating it was to engage with these structural challenges to established theatrical vocabulary and in one courageous case a challenge to fundamental linguistic structure.  This is coming from a projection designer who works primarily in traditional theater, (Rent, The Laramie Project, etc.)

600Highwaymen took Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and dispersed the play across a gigantic bingo hall with a group of actors of amazingly diverse age, gender, race, shape and sizes.  Performances are delivered straight with restrained emoting with some characters just watching and listening until their particular moments arrive.  Often performers are perpendicular to one another with only one facing the audience.  Days later I keep rewinding in my head what I witnessed and appreciating how energizing it was to have the structure of such an iconic piece of theater re-oriented as if it had been determined by the rolls of a cup full of dice.

In Bottled in Bond, Zeb L. West approaches patrons to play a role or provide sound effects or otherwise participate while the rest of us are drinking Jason Stevens’ five cocktails directly related to the story being performed.  This opens up what is usually an internal rehearsal process for all to witness, for all to be part of.  Yes we are talking about a Digestible Feats event at Dive Bar.   The experience of theatrical structure, conventions and vocabulary altered is still significant.

The text in An Evening with William Shatner Asterisk provides sweet delicious bait for the audience to unwittingly learn an entirely new language with a radical structure inside 50 minutes. Joe Diebes’ script is like a zen oppositional teaching about art and science that could be applied to almost anything.  Dog is dog because dog is not not cat.  But, dog cannot be dog because dog is not not cat because cat is not dog just because it is not not dog.  You can plug in any 2 diametrically opposed nouns – black & white, sun & moon, yin & yang, penis & vagina.

The audience is trained via visual cues, sound and subtitles like they were learning French with Rosetta Stone software.  The final preparation for the audience to fully comprehend this language is to disrupt everything you have learned so far by having an actor on stage speak in another language with the support of subtitles – an Asian one that presumably the audience does not already understand – to solidify your indoctrination.  By this time in the performance it felt as if the bridge between the left and right hemispheres of my brain was vibrating.  We take the plunge and get to comprehend part five without a net.   No subtitles.  No training wheels.  Just Captain Kirk delivering his conclusion in the new language that you now understand.  Like after Neo gets uploaded in The Matrix and says “I know Kung Fu.”

-Colin Lowry 

I’m not too sure if I’ll ever be able to fully process my first Fusebox Festival. The only previous festival I’ve ever attended was the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, but Fusebox and Fringe aren’t in any way analogous. Well, they both feature art and artists, and that’s analogous, but that’s about it.

Since I’m still trying to make sense of the past week, what follows are simply a collection of random thoughts. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll be able to put it into a narrative, but these are the things at the forefront of my mind:

I’m amazed at all the new friends I’ve made. Everyone at the festival welcomed me like an old friend, and I don’t think I met anyone I just didn’t like. From my new blogging buddies at Fusebox blog to musicians, visual artists, event coordinators, volunteers and R2D2. Everyone was fantastic.

The Digestible Feats events rocked my socks off. So if you see a pair of socks somewhere in the vicinity of 5th and Waller, please let me know. I’ve only got two other pair, and those have holes in them.

Seeing performances and blogging about them while also teaching six composition courses is hell on earth. My brain feels like spoiled flan. Thank the Lords of Kobol for coffee and Red Bull.

The HUB was awesome, but I still have splinters in my feet from the mulch. Thankfully, Lucky’s Puccias made me forget about my splintery feet.

I cry too much. In a film, the darkness conceals this shameful habit. In a well-lit area like the Lucky Lady Bingo Hall, people notice the weepy guy down front. Thank you 600 Highwaymen for making me look like a 12 year old girl seeing Titanic for the first time.

If Ron Berry doesn’t stop twirling his beard while in contemplation, I fear he’ll eventually rip his chin off. Also, Brad Carlin must dye his hair and beard. That’s the only means to explain how he can be a ginger but still have a lovely soul.

Swings in the middle of an urban environment are totally awesome. While drunkenly pushing a friend on one of the swings, I tried my level best to swing him so hard his head smashed into the ceiling. I came close. Like, inches close. I think if he hadn’t have been squirming and yelling like a psychotic I woulda nailed him.

Hank Cathey hasn’t succeeded in turning me into an alcoholic, but he’s come close. If I do become an alcoholic because of Hank, at least I’ll drinking myself to death with quality drinks. No Thunderbird for me.

And that’s all I’ve got right now. In a day or so, look over at mypersonalblog for uncut and uncensored excerpts from my Fusebox Festival blog posts. I’m going to post things I ended up self-censoring. Think of it as an SE DVD.

If my wife hadn’t been with me, I would never have been so organized. She kept me on schedule and on task. She also took pictures of damn near everything, so when I couldn’t remember a sequence of events, I always had a photographic timeline to guide me. Incidentally, she’s been posting her Fusebox Festival photos on her Tumblr. Giveitalook-see.

Lastly, I want to thank Tim Braun for giving me this opportunity to blog for Fusebox. Without him, I wouldn’t have had this amazing week. I’ll be the Snowman to your Bandit at the drop of a hat, good buddy. I’m 10-10 and on the side. Hypermark out.

-Mark Gifford

I’m going to ask my neighbor if I can borrow two cups of dopamine. This was my favorite Fusebox to date, and I’m still attempting to figure out why. But I have a theory. In the past I’ve always had a favorite show or event, but nothing sticks out in my mind as a “best of fest”, or a top moment. This year was more of a communal experience for me, a momentary occupy movement of the heart. Here is an effort to piece the festival and why it my favorite.

• When asked what Sam Webber does for Fusebox, I think the best answer is that she is the glue. Several times I caught Sam doing the “small” stuff.
• I won’t name names but a local performer often occupied the door to the HUB. I enjoyed talking with her about her husband, who, she claimed, wrote “Sad-bastard Music”.
• I’ve thought about a dozen different ways I could write about Gob Squad, the group I admittedly wanted to see the most, but Nightshot moves and shifts from night to night like no other. The evening I attended was fun, and I found myself laughing into a tizzy, but I was disappointed by the “story” that was designed to hold the narrative together. I was looking for something more complicated, but I fault myself for this disappointment, as my self-constructed expectations of the show couldn’t possibly live up to it. But why I’m mentioning them here is that they performed in an area of town I could navigate blindfolded where they found “love” in front of the pizza joint I eat at every Friday.
• After attending the deeply personal “Adam Sultan”, I want people to wear a clown nose at my funeral. The creators of the show are collecting objects from artists and patrons across the city to place in jars for this poignant project.
•  The “hair of the dog performance potlatch” by Culturebot was as productive and stimulating conversation as I’ve seen at Fusebox. I loathed one of our “discussions” last year at the Vortex, but what we also called “The Long Table” worked effectively to facilitate discussions. People took the conversation personally.
• If I did have a “Best of Fest” list ,Graham Schmidt would edge out Adam Sultan for best hair. I’d walk across hot coals for hair like these guys. I’d walk across hot coals to have hair again.
• Stumbling upon the free crawfish boil with the Culturebot team, Mark Gifford, and Steve Moore, was the happiest of surprises.
• I didn’t see it, but I heard Kirk Lynn sent Aaron Taylor to impersonate him for the impersonation game of Gob Squad. Brilliant.
• We had R2D2.
• I saw David Zambrano. Twice. I liked how he invaded the audience comfort zone.
• In the Fusebox pocket guide I’m the last staff member listed. I’m even under the interns. I bet if I had hair I would be above the interns. God, I miss my hair.
• Lucky and his ladies make a fantastic sandwich. For those you didn’t have a puccias, you can find him at 817 W. 5^th. I especially like how they treated my dog.
• I’m in the minority on this, but I didn’t care for “House Party for Jesus”. The best part of the show was when Graham Reynolds touched my shoulder and whispered to me that he wants “in” on a private group of text messages I send updating and editorializing the NBA play-offs to the Fusebox staff. I’m certain this will disappoint Josh Meyer.
• Josh leaves for L.A. on Thursday. I did everything I could to spend time with him at the festival.
• It was a bullet to the heart when Foot Patrol played a Beastie Boys song on Saturday night, only a day after the death of Adam Yauch. As Foot Patrol played, I was talking with Anna Jackson in the beer garden who asked me if I felt a drop of rain. Two minutes later a spectacular storm crashed down, forcing all of us in the beer garden into the HUB. My dog and I pulled electrical wires to higher ground as Connor Hopkins of Trouble Puppet dragged rubber furniture into the tops factory. It was a beautiful night. By the way, Conner has great hair.
• Holcombe Waller’s rendition of “Losing My Religion” on the last night of the festival was sublime.
• I loved the art in the HUB. Best one I think we ever had. The rubber furniture and the Red Swing project helped turn the gallery into something fresh and fun.

One of the best reasons I can think of for this year’s Fusebox being more communal was the beer garden at the HUB. In the past, I would see a show and run home to walk my dog. This year I brought Dusty to the beer garden for the sandwiches and hip out setting by Big Red Sun. In the process I was out way past my bedtime talking with people I rarely see outside of facebook.

When thinking about Adam and Steve’s piece revolving around aging and watching your friends die I know that I won’t see Steve Moore for a year, or Adam Sultan is my conclusion. Aaron Sanders and I will talk about getting a beverage or seeing a show, but it won’t happen. Anna Jackson and I will see each other on Pinterest. To me, the festival had it’s own understand, it’s own consciousness that we could all die tomorrow, so let’s get together tonight. Fusebox 2013 is April 17-28^th. Until then, I will focus on what I can give Steve and Adam to put in a jar. Man, do I wish I had hair to put in a jar.

-Timothy Braun

CODA

I want to thank our team of bloggers, Katherine Catmull, Mark Gifford, Julie Gillis, Robyn Ross, Aaron Sanders, and Adam Sultan. We had some surprise blogs as well from Sonnet Blanton, and Deepa Donde. We’ve been hammering together a group of diverse voices, styles, and interest for a few years now as we’ve developed the blog and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

I’ve always enjoyed reading about writers’ habits and schedules: “Leroy Realauthor gets up every day at 4:30, has two cups of coffee, writes for four hours and goes for a walk in the mountains behind his house. He returns at 10 and has a cheese sandwich before writing for three more hours. He writes exclusively in pencil while listening to Arvo Part.” Regardless of how different the author’s habits are from my own, these accounts encourage me and help me feel connected to a larger community of writers.

The Writer’s Room tour promised the same sort of inspiration and encouragement. While we wouldn’t observe the writers at work, we would get to visit their spaces, which yield clues to their writing practices. In what settings were my fellow Austin writers most productive, and how might we learn from one another?

My first destination was Annie La Ganga and Bill Cotter’s Hyde Park home. When I walked into the living room, seven people were busily scribbling on yellow pads. The hosts welcomed me warmly and invited me to pick a book from their coffee table, find a sentence, copy it down, and then free-write whatever came next. The group had been working for ten minutes. Annie added one extra minute for me.

When the timer went off, Annie shared her own work and then invited us to do the same. Everyone read, and, truly, as though we were in Lake Wobegon, everyone’s work was above average. Although we’d just met, I felt like I learned about each visitor’s personality through this short, almost stream-of-consciousness assignment.

My book was Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, and my sentence was “I sense that my back isn’t good and roll over onto my stomach.” I wrote:

I sense that my back isn’t good and roll over onto my stomach. Far below in the valley I see

               them lining up, as though to advance and attack. But instead of an enemy army of horses and

                men, it’s bulldozers and dump trucks, and they have a city permit, so there’s nothing I can do to

                stop them. Except:

A couple more folks arrived and helped themselves to drinks from the fridge. We sat in the living room for close to an hour, explaining what type of writing we each did and learning about the work of our hosts. I think they were going to read from their own work when several of us decided to check out a few more studios.

Next on my list was Wayne Alan Brenner’s house. I’d heard about his collection of exotic insects and looked forward to meeting both the man and his six-legged friends. When I arrived, I tried the door (it was locked), then knocked. Through the window, I could hear laughter and see people standing in the next room. I knocked, tried the door, and knocked again. Then I realized that this moment was perfectly consistent with my two prior attempts to talk with Brenner. Rather than seeking some far-off, ideal experience INSIDE his house, I should recognize the truth contained in THIS moment. This, too, was a valid visit to the Brenner Bunker. I got back in the car.

My last stop was Kathy Catmull’s peaceful South Austin home. I arrived mid-reading, and when she finished she invited the four of us into her writing room. We talked about process – including the best ways to temporarily disable one’s internet access – and how to establish a rhythm for working on a large project like a novel. While it was illuminating to know how Kathy, Annie and Bill worked, ultimately it was most encouraging simply to know that they are working – that, when I’m sitting at my writing table, looking out the window at my neighbor’s house, struggling to find the next word, these people are in their own homes doing the same. That knowledge can sustain a sense of community and support in the long, solitary hours in front of the computer. I’m grateful to the writers who opened their homes and their lives, and I hope this project continues next year.

-Robyn Ross

So it has been less than twenty four hours and I’ve seen five more shows. Unfortunately that means none of them will get the full time and attention they deserve. On the other hand I’m a big frothy joygasm of woot and could not be more appreciative of the artists, organizers, volunteers, and technical professionals for making it all happen. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me very often and I can’t help but laugh like a lunatic each time I pinch myself and discover again that it is real.

So Wonderbaum . . . I will fail at describing its awesomeness, so I’m gonna get a little Seussian to compensate. Fair enough?  It is like hoowoo stuffed into the sensation of flying wrapped in an uncontrollable giggle. It’s a fictional, biographical, musical, comedic, beast of performery wizardness. It’s split up into character-driven monologue/song/performances and each one was more charming and lovable than the last. The performers were energetic, hilarious, and so damn charismatic that it infected you with glee and excitement. There is so much I could point to. The songs are chart worthy, the (do I spoil here or not. . .) ‘athletic’ scenes were full of disneyesque wonder and joytasticness, the narratorish devicery was a touch of excellogenius. I guess what I’m saying is I liked it and the audience seemed ok with it too as shown by a standing ovation that forced the performers out for a second bow.

and Gobsquad was more of the same. I shiz you not. I felt like I had been kidnapped by ironic terrorists. The happy just refused to end and my face was cramping for all the smiling. This infectious and relentlessly upbeat group of guerilla film makers took to the Austin streets exactly one hour before the show with the mission of making the movie we would see an hour later. Our city became the cast and the subject as shaped by their joyous point of view and incredible timing. The four split off in four directions and willed graffiti, parking garages, drunks, and meanies into fun and truth and art. It was an incredibly brave and heartfelt manifesto of throttling the good out of life and refusing the cold of anonymity or the dark. The whole thing was self produced and then the sound was live mixed before our eyes. Each camera rolled nonstop and was projected on the back of the Rollins side by side allowing us to curate our own experience  and building the amazing experience into a cacophony of laughter and unabashed joy/hope/loviness. It needed to be followed by a dance party where hugs and high fives are mandatory. Again we clapped and clapped some more, standing in appreciation for the buffet of awesome sauce.

After all the embarrassment of yeeha-hellyeah-holycrapthatwassweetness that we had witnessed I was primed for some Hub time. The joint was jumpin’ and already filled with familiar faces and sparkling conversations. Holcombe Waller was on the stage tantalizing the audience with his unique brand of folksy/rock/blues. The group had an amazing full sound for a trio that was comprised of voice and strings and the music had an elegant simplicity that made me think it would perfect to write to. I didn’t get to hear the whole set but I got the sense this was a heartfelt song list and only the tip of the iceberg.

A couple of Lonestars later Foot Patrol hit the stage and the dance party I was looking for arrived with a vengeance. This was Old School at its finest and ranged from rock to rap to some serious booty shaking funk. The crowd rose to the occasion becoming a mass of jumping, dancing sweat covered hell raisers and again, though I continue to anchor myself to a table and hide behind the ‘job’ of quasi-journalism I must confess that I did shake my money maker. I snuck outside to see what was going on in the garden and after joining in and congratulating the newlyweds who were having their reception across the street with some hooping and hollering I had some great conversations, but then . . . the rain. For the first time all night everyone was inside and the timing could not have been better. Foot Patrol ended their set with a funktastic rendition of Bust a Move that thrilled and exhilarated the entire room.

The rain had multiple effects that were each a little magical. It cooled us. It forced people into new and larger clumps of conversation. It cleansed the Hub and seemed to signal an appreciation for the unbridled way in which we had so recently raised the roof. It also served as a time stamp for me and a reminder that from all of the fine work and collaboration that I have witnessed this week, new seeds will grow. Finally it hung as the backdrop for the bittersweet reality that our time together is almost at an end. I stood in the rain with a brave few for minute or two and then let the front push me to the car, down the highway, and into the soft bosom of my home and dreams.

This is probably the last bit I’ll write about before the end of the festival. Tonight Todd Reynolds and the Golden Hornet Project will play and it will be stunning and powerful. I know this because everything Graham and Peter do blows my mind. We really do live in an amazing time in an amazing town. Take advantage of it. Speaking of which, I snuck down to see the Machine Shop project that Sibyl Kempson is working on with an incredible group of Austin’s best collaborators. After a charmingly curated description of a process I could not help but envy, we were treated to a brief snippet of what will eventually become one of Austin and New York’s favorite new plays. What they have done is built friendships, a language for working together, and a methodology for experimentation and then just let the work reveal itself. It is funny and weird and cool and already something I know people would pay to see.

So that’s it. I’ll probably write something next week once the festival has had some time to sink in and I’ve caught up on some sleep. Thank you all so much for reading my words, for enriching my experience through conversation and kindness, and for creating another incredible Fusebox Festival. I’ll be at the Hub tonight, like I said, but if I don’t see you consider yourself cyber-hugged and digitally high-fived. Namaste and happy trails.

-Aaron Sanders

Today represented the penultimate day of Fusebox Festival, and to kick it off, I began at the Fusebox HUB for the Culturebot’s Hair of the Dog Potlatch, a discussion about art which was meant to “[bring] together visiting artists with members of Austin’s arts community to discuss what it means to create work in a given place: what are the advantages, what are the challenges, and what can we learn from each other.”

Andrew Horwitz, Culturebot founder and EIC, and Jeremy Barker, Culturebot editor, explained that we were to have a long-table discussion about the myriad challenges involved with creating contemporary art. They encouraged those of us who were sitting at the long-table to eventually leave the table and sit with the audience, and then any audience member who wanted to add to the conversation could take the empty seat and enter into the discussion.

I have to admit, I felt a bit out of my league at this long-table discussion. Wait. Not out of my league, exactly. Just in another league. I walked out of my league and into another league where the rules had changed and the goals were different.

Since I am not an artist per se, I tend to view the subject of contemporary art from an outsidery, slightly academic perspective. And since my background in rhetoric and composition is highly influenced by sociology and behavioral psychology, I tend to look at things a lot differently than playwrights, visual artists, and art critics.

Several of the folks at the table were quite concerned with the logistics involved when an artist attempts to take his or her piece of art to another location. How would the artist find a support network in a new town? What kind of resources are available for an artist? How can we create a national and even global community of artists to help support these endeavors? Things like that.

Since I’m relatively new at this and I’m not an artist, I’m more interested in the mindset and psychology of the audience, and how we can excite an audience about art. How do we get people who are not normally interested in art to see art as a worthwhile good? At the table, a few people expressed, well, not exactly dismay, but kind of an annoyance that some people see art as a capitalist good or a consumable product. Truthfully, it’s hard for me to not see art in that way.

In my mind, the people in any given audience always have a choice to make. Kind of an economic, cost/benefit analysis, if you will. What are the benefits of viewing/experiencing a piece of art versus what will I lose from viewing/experiencing it? I feel like we, as a society, marginalize art because understanding it and creating it don’t normally translate into any substantial or immediate financial gain. Thus, many people feel as if artistic endeavors are “a waste of time.” They don’t want to waste their time or money, both of which are finite goods, on something that won’t immediately benefit them.

You mean I have to know something about art criticism to understand the play? No thanks. I’ll save my money and stay home and watch 2 ½ Men. I don’t have to know a damn thing to understand that show.

I’m most interested in finding ways to convince a wider audience that art absolutely has value, and that to be a fan of art, you don’t necessarily have to be an academic or a snob. If we keep creating art for the same group of artistic fans, we’re just creating a feedback loop. In Fight Club, Tyler says “self-improvement is masturbation.” In a way, so is creating art for the same group of people. After a while, what’s the point?

The Culturebot long-table discussion was a lot of fun, and I liked being able to see how different people view the same problem. One of the things that Fusebox does well is to foster conversations about the importance of art and to create an environment where those conversations can eventually affect change.

Before I move on, let me make one thing perfectly clear. When you’re looking through next year’s Fusebox Festival book of events, and you see one like the Culturebot’s Hair of the Dog Potlatch and you think “That looks interesting, but I don’t know enough about art to participate,” then you absolutely positively should go to the event. And you should also bring a friend. Enter the conversation. Your voice is just as valid as mine.

In the evening I caught a performance of MACHINE SHOP: STEVE MOORE & PHYSICAL PLANT THEATER: ADAM SULTAN.

The Adam Sultan piece is a work in progress, and the people involved hope to have the piece ready for next year’s Fusebox Festival. We only saw a third of the eventual performance, but what we did see I found intriguing. I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but I will say that I can’t wait to see the finished product. It was kinda funny and a little existential, all combined with a bit of Bunraku and magical realism.

-Mark Gifford

What I took away from “The Word: A House Party for Jesus”: It’s funny when you mix the sacred and profane. Ha ha.

Brian Osborne’s one-man show, performed outdoors in a mock revival, is a mix of monologues, participatory prayers and hymns, and sensory experiences. Osborne’s character is an energetic Christian minister who talks about the Lord but also about sex, trouble he got into as a kid, and his conflicted relationship with his father. It’s not unusual to hear him say “Holy Spirit” and “fuck” in the same paragraph.

If you have no relationship with church – if you never did, or if you’ve given up on it – you may find House Party funny and cathartic and a bit bizarre. If you attend a charismatic church, you’ll likely find the show an offensive mockery of your faith. If you don’t call yourself religious, but do respect the quest for meaning that religion represents, I’ll be interested to know what meaning you find in “House Party.”

In rhetoric, the “straw man” fallacy is deliberately creating a caricature of your opponent’s position. The more ridiculous and one-dimensional the portrayal of the argument, the easier it is to destroy it. I feel like Osborne’s performance egged his audience to participate in a straw-man demolition of Christianity. “Look at this ridiculous, hypocritical preacher, guys. Let’s participate in his theatrical hallelujahs. Let’s laugh together at ministers who pretend to heal and who pass the plate too many times. Ha ha ha!”

Osborne never claimed his “revival” represents all of Christianity. But by doing universally Christian things like leading us in prayer or having us say “Amen” or “Hallelujah,” Osborne invited us to laugh not just at his character, but at praying and saying Amen and Hallelujah. As a person who does these things sincerely in my own spiritual life, I felt uncomfortable doing so in a way that was staged for comedy.

I wonder if Osborne assumes people of faith just don’t come to his show. But the three people I talked with after the show all believe in a higher power and have some positive experience of church. The part of me that feels Osborne’s antics were cheap shots wants to suggest a simple test. Would we giggle and facetiously participate in a show that appropriated Jewish imagery or had us pretend to engage in Muslim prayer? If not, why does it feel ok to do that with Christianity?

After the show, the woman next to me mentioned the 1972 documentary “Marjoe,” which chronicles the life of a real child evangelist who preached in tent revivals. Osborne affects Marjoe’s accent and even refers to himself as “Marjoe” at times during the show. Oh, I thought – that changes things. If the show was based on this documentary, it was less Brian Osborne’s own statement about religion and more a riff on another text.

So we asked Osborne how central this documentary was to his piece – would it be better if we’d seen it? “Not at all,” he answered. He said it was the primary source of text for a while, but not anymore – my understanding was that he meant his show was now an independent work, his own. This left me again wondering what I was supposed to get out of the performance, other than a laugh about smoking pot in church.

I want to experience more theatre that actually engages with spiritual dilemmas. Osborne asked at various points in the show, “Who is Jesus to you?” “Can God ‘deliver’ an alcoholic, a dope addict or a cheater, or heal the sick?” “God, why did you make me this way, full of doubts and temptations?” These are real, legitimate questions that could be the basis for an interesting show. But Osborne played them for laughs.

My dissatisfaction with “House Party” comes less from it being “offensive” than from feeling it was a missed opportunity. Religion and art are, at their best, both ways that humans find meaning. It would be nice if, when they overlap, the result could be a performance that leaves me feeling challenged and transformed instead of empty.

-Robyn Ross

My wife showed up to The Off Center in a beautiful print dress and some jazzy little open-toed shoes. She was looking like a bucket of hot sauce with a side of meow and I was looking like an extra from Office Space. I compensated for my lacking attire with charm, a fair amount of grinning, some not too subtle ogling of the aforementioned wife, and margaritas. It’s a science and the exact mixture of these things is a deeply held secret. . . but you know, buy me a drink and I’ll tell you almost anything.

We made it back from margaritaville just in time to slide in to our seats for What is Common another Machine Shop work in progress. This was an intimate performance that seemed to convey a construct onto which each audience member could project their own experience. There was repetition of movement with many variations and what I found when I spoke with people afterward is that we had all picked out different things to focus on. Since there was no story in the typical manner one would expect our imagination had simply begun to make on. I saw things like owning your space, and discomfort with your body, and struggling with typical ideas of  what is feminine. I’m not sure if any of those things were intentionally conveyed, but I thought it was cool that their work forced me somehow to engage and I’m interested to see what becomes of the piece.

Dinner break . . . Let’s just say we found the glasses and I got refunded for my meal and move on shall we? Clearly the company was the best part of the meal.

We circled back around to see A House Party for Jesus, which I’ll just say up front, you should see. A take on faith, this interactive sermon ranged from hymnal singing, to chili eating, to praising, to painful and inappropriate stories. I’ve got a lot of preachers and missionaries in my family and I laughed loud and often. Brian Osborne was charismatic and funny and vulnerable with just the right mix of, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’. It was a nice example of how the call to serve can sometimes drive you crazy and a great combination of big tent revival and bag yard pup tent party. The seemingly chaotic way he used the sound equipment was a brilliant way to convey emotion, while offering an opportunity to shift focus. The use of lights was smart and economical. And finally I want to give a shout out to the crowd, who were equal parts brave and brazen. This was not just a good show it was a good time.

Speaking of great times; I snuck off to the Hub for Lullacruza while my wife went to pick up the kiddo. Lullacruza is a little boggling to me. Their music touches my core. They are just one of those groups that have an easy mastery of all of the tools of their craft and from that a sort of uncomplicated wisdom springs. They seem connected to their earth in a different way than I am. Each musical choice seems mindful and improvised at once. There is never too much, never more than is needed. They sing with amazing range and heart. The music makes me want to contemplate my path and make things better. It makes me want to spend more time with the tools of my trade and discover new ones. It makes me want to become rooted and then spring forth. It was a great sprinboard for the conversation and comraderie that followed in the Hub’s garden. There’s only a couple more days now folks. Get out and see a show then mosey on down to the Hub, have a drink and meet a friend.

-Aaron Sanders