 "Photo:")
Bryan Pudder, a 42-year-old creative director at GSD&M advertising agency in Austin, inflates a giant beach ball on the stage at the Four Seasons Hotel ballroom and says nothing.
Written on one side of the ball is "Big." The slightly confused lunch audience, lulled by previous PowerPoint presentations, begins to understand what's going on as Pudder flips the ball over. On the other side is written "Ideas."
He bats the ball off the stage, along with a couple other beach balls with similar messages, into the crowd. The audience bounces the balls around for a minute - and 50 seconds, to be exact.
Pudder's antics were an answer to the question, what is Interactive? It was the one posed at the first "20x2" show in 2001. The show, originally part of the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, gathers artists, musicians, writers, Web geeks and other inspired individuals to face a creative challenge: 20 people get two minutes each to provide offbeat answers to an ambiguous question.
The sixth "20x2" happens Saturday at the Tambaleo bar in Austin. It's still part of SXSW, but now there's an autumn version too. This time the band Masonic, artist and musician Ethan Azarian, and slam poet David Hendler will tackle the question "What's the Story?" in whatever bizarre fashion they can cook up.
Kevin Newsum, a 35-year-old marketing manager, had the idea for the show for reasons he says remain obscure. He and Jeff Rider, a 30-year-old bar manager, have staged the show since its beginning.
"We like to ask universal questions that are just provocative enough to get people to think," Newsum says. "People come to us all the time and ask, 'How do I go about answering the question?' My answer is always the same. We want it to be a reflection of who you are and what your experience is."
Rider says the show's popularity has made recruiting easy.
"They just come beg us for a spot," Rider says. "Other people are terrified of it."
Though they used to gong each participant off the stage at the 120-second mark, Rider and Newsum have resorted to the more subtle and flexible method of a flashing light bulb that informs speakers when their time is up.
Two-time presenter Ryan Gantz, a 26-year-old Web designer in Los Angeles, says the limitations of the format are what makes "20x2" so successful.
"It makes you distill an answer down to something that has to fit into the construct of time and stage," Gantz says. "You have to exploit those limitations to communicate something powerful and impressive.
Gantz's favorite performances are either the "experimental" ones, which communicate that there's no easy answer or that the question is irrelevant, or the ones that answer the question directly with a sincere approach.
For Gantz, one that stands out for its emotion and spontaneity is the answer presented by Min Jung Kim, a 30-year-old marketing manager and freelance humor columnist in San Francisco, to "What RU W8ing for?" in 2003 at SXSW Interactive. She called her father from the stage on a speakerphone and got him to say, "I love you."
"It was sweetly personal," Gantz says. "It was nice to see that connection.
Ethan Azarian, a 41-year-old local painter and musician, wrote a new song each of the two times he presented, both of which later appeared on his album "Captain of the Town." Azarian says he plans to present a new song in answer to this year's "What's the Story?"
Jerm Pollet, 33-year-old entertainer who's part of Mr. Sinus Theater, has written two "autobiographical confessional" songs for delivery at previous "20x2s."
For "Who Are You?," propped with the odd bar mitzvah gift of a pair of binoculars, Pollet sang about a moment in his early adolescence with a chorus of "Mom, I'm not a peeping Tom."
At the same show, 26-year-old Web developer Leia Scofield of Dallas compiled the answers to every bizarre Internet quiz she could find, from "Which president are you?" to "What flavor of ice cream?"
Ryan Gantz was asked at the very last minute to fill in for a no-show in 2002's "What is Real?"
Improvising, he sat down in front of the microphone with four or five sheets of paper and proceeded to very poorly articulate a story about when he was a kid. He apologized to the audience, teared up, theatrically sprinted off the stage to the bathroom, and the audience was left asking itself, "Was that real?"
Sometimes audience members involve themselves.
After Pudder's silent yet crowd-pleasing beach-ball batting episode, a woman from the crowd snatched one of the balls from Pudder himself and ran off with her stolen prize.
Pudder was touched.
"It just goes to show," says Newsum, "people take parts of the show with them."
'20x2' version 4.5: 'What's the Story?' Cinque Hicks, artist Andy Langer, writer Lance Myers, animator Masonic, band David Hendler, slam poet Roger Fort, designer Professor Griffin, TV horror show host Ethan Azarian, artist, musician Ruaraidh MacPherson, Web developer Lloyd Thompson, online moviemaker Robert Frye, musician Erica Hess, ad maven Nicole Janson, musician Tim O. Thompson, designer Jacob Villanueva, digital artist Jaye Joseph, designer Tina Winslow, blogger Carla Wilder, blogger Billy Hutchison, writer
Saturday, 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Tambaleo, 302 Bowie St. www.20x2.org
Be the first to comment on this article!