Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matt Clarke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Matt thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

This is the story of my first ever successful grant application:

I had been fortunate to break even just through ticket sales during the first five years running my little non-profit theatre company. Sometimes we even made a hundred dollars or so and would give the cast a few bucks in a card after closing. It was rugged DIY theatre in niche venues that allowed me and others to cut our teeth and do personal projects. For free.

A few times I picked up gigs as a dramaturg/director where someone (friends) could pay me. Not a lot but it was more than a few bucks in a card and I felt valued. And these people were able to guarantee the money beforehand, it wasn’t a surprise perk after closing. Where did this money come from? I was too polite to ask of course so I had to do detective work and here’s what I sleuthed: grants.

Applications for grant funding seemed so official and inaccessible. I couldn’t get any of the organization acronyms straight. There were so many profiles to create. I was lucky my company had incorporated as a non-profit two years earlier but there sure was an intimidating amount of info to provide once I finally got up the courage to peruse organizations and programs online. My first application ever was a co-written Canada Council for the Arts Project Grant that took us around 50 hours each to complete. It doesn’t even matter what the project was. It was a severe waste of time.

This was happening at the same time as I was rewriting an earlier adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut short story to do at the Vancouver Fringe Fest. I was really passionate about casting teenagers as the three main characters in this new version of a sci-fi story that explored the effects of on-demand unmitigated happiness emanating from a machine. My vision was just settling and I had started to gather an awesome team including three incredible teen performers just as I google-stumbled across an ArtStarts ‘Creative Spark’ grant application. It granted money to emerging artists (under 27 years old) to fund projects that meaningfully engaged children, youth or teens.

My application was done by the next evening. Something clicked when my passion for the project and the goals of the grant program were in sync. The application was fun to write. And it was successful! I was awarded $1,200 which paid for every production cost for that show. And I got the next grant I applied for too, this time from the BC Arts Council Youth Engagement Program (RIP) and again for a project that I cared deeply about.

Success with applications for grant funding always varies, nothing is assured no matter how passionate I am or how perfect a grant program is for a project. But I’ll always remember that $1,200 from ArtStarts and how it inspired new perspective in the way I produce theatre and in how I serve my community as an artist.

Matt, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Since 2012 I’ve been AD of Little Mountain Lion Productions, a non-profit organization with the mandate of fostering the development of youth and emerging artists through our projects and productions. Our most recent project is the “Stories Written by Kids” Series (2020-2024), where youth authors write and direct their own unique new short plays which our team of professional artists presents both at the kids’ school and at The Cultch Theatre. Also in Fall 2023 we ran a workshop project with a group of seventeen local emerging and established female theatre artists adapting a 1923 Swedish ghost story by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. We also premiered Anne Washburn’s “Mr Burns – a post electric play” in 2018, and have adapted two stage versions of Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Euphio Question” (2012, 2017), among many other super fun projects (www.littlemountainlion.com).

My personal practice generally centres around youth and young artists. One of my favourite recent projects outside of my own company was for Neworld Theatre, a pandemic-era puppet play called “Division Infinity Saves the World” initially run at the 2023 Vancouver International Children’s Festival. This project was facilitated by myself and two phenomenally talented artists named Keely O’Brien and Shizuka Kai, and we based the play on kids’ experience of the covid-19 pandemic explored through theatre and arts exercises with three different classes of 4th graders. I have a big interest in re-examining youth agency in Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA), and projects like this really excite me.

Other than my work with youth, I’m super proud of my work producing RIOT – a monthly sketch comedy group that exploits idiosyncrasies and injustices in Vancouver. We can sometimes go for the throat but in the most loving way. The comedy is driven by a need to see change in our community. It’s a totally unreal group of passionate talent who are about to have a really big year – watch out for them at Just For Laughs Vancouver this February!

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

Haha for real a friend in the music industry has been trying to explain this to me for a couple years now and I’m still in smile-and-nod mode, sorry! Maybe I’m a luddite. Maybe I just like things I can touch and feel and smell. There’s a copy of Shakespeare’s first folio at the UBC library that I got to check out recently- you know what the coolest part of it is? There’s a beer stain on one of the pages! Art is meant to be felt and handled and altered by those who encounter it. I’m very old fashioned though I think. I like campfire stories.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Yes! There is not an artist out there who wouldn’t benefit from Viola Spolin’s philosophies, exercises and definitions of terms in “Improvisation for the Theatre.” Come to think of it the world would be a much more joyful and empathetic place if it were required reading for CEOs and politicians as well. Spolin’s theories on group play transcend theatre and unlock tools to understanding self, others and real community.

“Play! A Direct Experience will free your intuition in a life moment, right now!” – Viola Spolin

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlemountainlionproductions.com
• Instagram: @lmlshows / @riot_vancouver

Image Credits

Duy Nguyen, Emily Cooper