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[0:21] Anna Altide: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Anna Altide.

[0:43] Anna Altide: In the wake of COVID-19, never has it been more time-sensitive than to provide a virtual home and community for creatively displaced theatrical artists and creators. In this edition, we spoke with award-winning director and choreographer Jason A. Sparks, President and Theatrical Director of Fosters Theatrical Artist Residency. Fosters is a new non-profit organization designed to support and nurture artists and their new theatrical works to their truest, greatest potential. To explain the development and origin of Fosters, here is Jason A. Sparks in his own words.

[1:30] Jason A. Sparks: Hi, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from today?

[1:34] Jason A. Sparks: Hi, I'm Jason A. Sparks. I am the President and Executive Director of Fosters Theatrical Artist Residency, calling from New York City.

[1:44] Anna Altide: What is Fosters Theatrical Artist Residency?

[1:47] Jason A. Sparks: So our official mission statement of Fosters is that Fosters Theatrical Artist Residency elevates artists to their fullest evolution by providing a supportive, equitable, peaceful community to develop and foster new theatrical works by offering creative artists space, time, and resources. Basically, what that means is we believe that a lot of new theatrical works need more time and process, and that's how we plan on elevating artists to their fullest evolution. Our goal is to support new theatrical works as well as to offer a home, a place, a community for actors and storytellers to reconnect with their own artistic voice as well.

[2:31] Anna Altide: Take us back. When did Fosters first become a glint in your eye? Tell us about the impetus for Fosters.

[2:39] Jason A. Sparks: So I've had this idea for Fosters for a few years now, and it was more of my 10-year plan. It was further down the road. And then COVID happened, and all of a sudden I was given the opportunity to actually spend some time in developing this idea. Around August, I just started calling some friends and saying, what do you think about something like this? It seemed like there was a need. I've been really fortunate in my career to work on lots of new work. My own opinion was that sometimes the new work did not end up working out because it was bad, but because it wasn't given enough time and process. Whether it be the playwrights, the actors, whoever it was, were shepherded through the process in a way that I knew we could do better than this.

I knew that we as a community could do a lot better than this. So I wanted to create a place where that happened. And so I started researching lots and lots of residencies, and there's incredible residencies out there for pottery and photography and literature, and you go on and on. There's tons. And there wasn't a residency for actors. There wasn't a place for actors to go to connect with their own artistic voice without the exchange of money. You are either paying for something or being paid. I believe that there is an expectation for product, and that is exactly what we're against at Fosters, is just about leaving people in process, kind of studying every single road that something could go down to. Seeing that I believe playwrights in new theatrical works needed time and process, and actors need some place to go to connect with their own artistic voice.

[4:18] Anna Altide: So you've got the idea, you're bouncing it off of people, and everyone's like, that's a great idea, Jason. Go make it happen. How do you do that? How do you take this great idea, this need that you see in the universe, and start making it a reality?

[4:23] Jason A. Sparks: Yeah, I mean, I've learned a lot. That's the truth. Starting a non-profit, I knew nothing about. I'm super fortunate that I had so many people kind of guiding me through this process, including, quite honestly, the most incredible board of directors that I could ask for, working artists, teaching artists, people who work in the non-profit sector, accountants, everybody that was kind of holding my hand through this process of, how does this start? From filing the paperwork with a lawyer, to then starting to raise money so that we can support the community. It's been a long process. I think it's a process that's never going to stop, but I've had a lot of people help me along the way.

[5:10] Anna Altide: Tell us sort of the nuts and bolts of creating this non-profit.

[5:14] Jason A. Sparks: The whole idea of the non-profit, and the whole idea of Fosters' eventual goal, is that we will have a home of our own where we'll be able to host residencies throughout the year. That is the long-term goal. And the short-term goal, actually, very soon, we're going to be announcing our spring residency of where that's going to be, where we partnered with an estate who's going to house us. And our goal is to be doing a few of these throughout the year, as well as, one of my board members calls it, they're little snacks. How do we help our community in between these residencies? In the beginning of January, we are hosting a virtual retreat called Cultivating Curiosity Through COVID. That came about by my board of directors and I getting together and saying, what is it that we're feeling right now?

And none of us were feeling wildly creative. And so we said, if we're feeling this way, our community must be feeling this way as well. And how can we assist that? How can we help that? I kind of see our residencies as tentpoles. And then we have many little snacks around those tentpoles of ways to fulfill our mission of trying to elevate artists to their fullest evolution.

[6:20] Anna Altide: So what is a virtual retreat? How do you create community in a time when people aren't supposed to be in the same place?

[6:27] Jason A. Sparks: It's such a great question. And it's one that we're so excited to explore in January. How to be creative by yourself, right? When we're so used to leaning on a community of other people to help us be creative, how do you do that? We at Fosters believe that you can't separate the human from the artist. So when you take care of the human, you take care of the artist and therefore are taking care of their art. So part of this virtual retreat is going to be meditation, led by board member Corinne Plantadie and Tony nominee Corinne Plantadie, because that is a huge part that we also believe in learning how to be creative yourself is you got to figure out who yourself is first. I'm also so excited the board has curated this box of curiosities that we are going to be sending every single participant within the retreat to ignite curiosity in them through these different activities that we will be doing virtually together.

Through that then as well that will help inspire a playwright write a short virtual play and that will discover which ways that goes throughout the week and if that ends up being two pages of something it's two pages and if that ends up being 50 pages it ends up being 50 pages but that's not the product is not the goal. It's about how to ignite that process from behind a screen at home by yourself. It's just something that we're not used to and I think something that we're all learning how to navigate.

[8:03] Anna Altide: So the idea is that the actors are working with a playwright or playwrights to indulge in the creative process. The playwrights are sort of building something for the actors or on the actors?

[8:08] Jason A. Sparks: On the actors is the goal. Day one they will not know the other participants in the retreat and it's through that you know then the next day there's a few pages written and then the next and we talk about it and we work on it while still exploring this box of curiosities while still doing meditation and then the next day we expand upon that and we expand upon that and we expand upon that. To be honest with you it's equally thrilling and equally terrifying because we know how to guide this path but we have no idea where this path is going to end up.

[8:39] Anna Altide: You're looking to create a product which is a retreat in which you are looking to create no product but there's still a product which is the retreat.

[8:44] Jason A. Sparks: Yes. Can you give us a hint of something in this curiosity box to employ our own curiosities?

[8:52] Jason A. Sparks: Yeah, the cool thing about it is I can tell you there's going to be a blindfold I'm not going to tell you what it's going to be for. So that's kind of part of it as they open it up and be like what is this for? I hope none of our participants will be listening to this but one of the other things I'm really excited about we're just going to send them directions and it will look like.

[9:17] Jason A. Sparks: It's like when you find a new way to walk from your house to work. Even if you just take one separate block, you can be seeing things that you've never seen before.

[9:32] Jason A. Sparks: Exactly. And what's also so cool about this is we have participants in every time zone of the United States. You're going to get a very different perspective from that picture all taken around the same time. Someone living in New York is going to be seeing somebody very different living in Houston, Texas.

[9:57] Jason A. Sparks: What do you see the relationship is between curiosity and creativity? We've had such deep conversations about this at Fosters. At first, there were some board members that said creative curiosity is the same thing. I stood firmly in saying, actually, I don't think that's true. I don't think that those are two of the same thing. Being curious about something as an artist almost always leads me in a creative mindset. That is my way in. If I'm not curious about it, I'm not necessarily going to care about it and then therefore not going to do good art for it. I think that is the first step of the creative process. Being curious, something sparks your imagination, something sparks your mind. If we can creatively be curious, then I think that is the ultimate step towards creation.

[10:44] Jason A. Sparks: I want to go back to one of the first things you said was about creative processes where you felt like something didn't work and it wasn't because it was a bad idea, but because it wasn't given enough time to grow. I'm wondering if you can give us an example. I don't want to throw anybody under a bus, but take us through the if we would have had more time, we could have gotten this thing solved.

[11:10] Jason A. Sparks: I mean, without giving like a very specific example, even within the time constraints of in today's commercial theater world, a lab or something like this, they need a product to sell by the end of a certain date. So from day one of rehearsal, even though you're given this time, you're given this space to create, you know that there is a deadline in which you need to create something in order to raise money for it to move on. And that pressure, I believe, is not conducive to being creatively free to say, well, what happens if all that work we did today, we're going to throw out tomorrow and we're going to do something new because that's what we need to do to figure this out. When you have that deadline, when you have the pressure of saying by the end of this, we need to raise three million dollars so that we can do this, that doesn't allow for that to happen. I've just been a part of so many things where the idea is so good, but because of the process of having to rush through it, not everything has been able to be explored.

[12:17] Jason A. Sparks: So how do actors work together at one of your retreats? We really want to get to know the individual. I will always say self-proclaimedly, Fosters has a woo-woo aspect to it, meaning that we really do believe in yoga and meditation and how that can influence art. That's a huge, huge part of what we believe in. We have to make sure that people, the actors, the playwrights, the storytellers are open enough to let that be a part of their process. Openness is a huge, huge part of the people that we're looking at. Are you even open to this idea? Within that, how well can you collaborate? What is your definition of the collaboration process? What does that mean to you? Actors connecting with their own artistic voice, meaning that they have stake.

They are part of the process. They are not just malleable puppets, but they are a voice within the creative process. It's finding that person who has a spark of that, and then we turn that spark into an ember. That ember turns into a flame. That flame turns into blah, blah, blah. That is our process at Fosters in order to form collaboration.

[13:25] Jason A. Sparks: How do you see residencies and the snacks that you've mentioned helping artists in the more structured processes when they are trying to get the $3 million? Or they are in a rehearsal room with an opening night attached to it. How does this room to be curious set them up for greater success? Ideally, if Fosters does its job right, we will build confidence in every single artist's own artistic voice. And having more confidence in your own artistic voice allows you to show up authentically in those higher pressure situations. Because when you're confident in what you're saying and how you're saying it and how you're doing it, being true to your authentic self in that way, then I would say you're more capable of dealing with those pressures that naturally come with commercial theater.

[14:20] Jason A. Sparks: Sounds scary in a way to be this creative, right? Like you're describing something that is not familiar and is not necessarily going to be easily defined at the end of it. There is sort of a fear of the unknown. Are you sensing that?

[14:37] Jason A. Sparks: 100%. But with the fear of the unknown also comes the capacity for endless possibility. That's where the excitement comes and overtakes my fear. By not knowing where we're going, we could go everywhere. That is thrilling to me. And certainly in this time, the idea of going anywhere is thrilling.

[15:01] Jason A. Sparks: Tell us about your next residencies that are coming up. Like I said, we have the Cultivating Curiosity Through COVID. That's happening in the beginning of January, which we're super excited about. Also, another little snack that we're soon going to be announcing are open discussion forums with other leaders within the theater community, which is a place for anybody, this will be virtual for the time being, a place for anybody to come and be part of a discussion on a specific topic. Those topics will be specific. We'll find somebody who does this well and say, you know, how do you create new theatrical works within today's political climate? So other ways just to have people feel like they're using their voices.

Like I said, we will be announcing very soon our spring residency as well. We're taking applications from existing theatrical works. So something that a playwright has already written and now needs to move to the next level of hearing it every day by actors. And so we will provide housing, food, yoga, meditation, and then workspace with what we call a creative doula, not a director, but someone that's just there to guide and kind of keep everybody on the same page so that that playwright, that storyteller can have the next step in process. Hopefully from there, they can move on to another production of it, having fully fleshed something out.

[16:24] Jason A. Sparks: I need a creative doula in my life in general. We all do, right? We all need a creative doula.

[16:32] Jason A. Sparks: So how can people apply or learn more or learn more specifics or get new information if they're listening in the future? The easiest way is to go to our website, which is www.fostersresidency.org. You can also sign up for our mailing list there as well. That's the quickest and easiest way or to follow us on Instagram at Fosters Residency as well. I would not be a president and executive director if I wasn't saying we could always use that $2, $3, $4 donation, and you can make a tax-deductible donation by going to our website as well.

[17:06] Jason A. Sparks: Anything else you want to add, Cher? Our biggest thing is that we are here to serve the theater community. If anybody has any idea of how Fosters can help better serve the theater community, we're here to be a team player. Always feel free to reach out to say partner or to say how I can help you individually. That's important to us as well.

[17:26] Jason A. Sparks: Ah, you're so great. Thanks, Mo.

[17:37] Jason A. Sparks: Special thanks to Jason A. Sparks for opening up about Fosters Theatrical Artists Residency. If you would like more information, please visit FostersResidency.org.

[17:47] Mo Brady: The Ensemblist was produced today by Mo Brady, Jackson Klein, and me, Anna Altide. There are two great ways you can help The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. The other is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at Patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at our home on Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram, where we share all of our latest episodes. Stay safe, and thank you for listening. Until next time.