We just got through a major festival, and some people may still be feeling the effects. But some people may still be in a festive mood, and they are in luck.

In mid-April, the city will host the eighth annual Fusebox Festival. Running from April 17th-28th, it hosts contemporary art across many genres, including music, dance, food, painting, theater, and performance art from artists local, national, and international.

Although not as well known as SXSW or ACL, Fusebox is still uniquely Austin, including the wild stunts such as the one performed three years ago, when two hundred people walked on to the Capitol Building’s lawn and did the two step under the direction of local composer Graham Reynolds. Or when the Long Arts Performing Center was stormed by a resurgence of riot grrls.

This year, events include visual artist Johnny Walker secretly creating “clandestine gardens” around town, a bicycling tour of the city’s alternative arts places, and “Digestible Feats” a combination of art and food. Like SXSW, the various events are spread out all across downtown Austin, and some parties even move from place to place each day.

St. Edward’s faculty and students are also taking part in the festival. Timothy Braun, professor of Cultural Studies and American Dilemmas, also works for Fusebox as their editor of news and social media. As he puts it, it involves “organizing the bloggers, give them their assignments, I edit the blogs, I also work with other blogs, like the Huffington Post, Culturebot, and then I also handle the Facebook stuff and the Twitter stuff.”

Michelle Polgar, managing director of the Moody Theater, also helps out with the festival, and has brought students in as volunteers, though this is her first year of direct involvement.

“I recommend that my class be involved in it because I teach a Theater Management 2 course, and my class is going to have the opportunity to basically run one whole segment of Fusebox, so they’ll get deep involvement in the project and the process, and have an opportunity to work with a group of artists from the UK, up and coming performance folks, and I think it’s going to be a great, great thing.” She also notes that St. Edward’s alumni have been involved with the founding of the festival.

Junior Sadie Hollifield, volunteering in the festival this year as an assistant stage manager for some of the theater shows,  “Fusebox is exciting. It’s definitely not theater that people are used to seeing. You have no idea what you’re walking into whenever you do, but when you get there, you see work that’s kind of scary because its unknown, but when you start watching it, it reveals deeper things.”

Could we have another big name, tourist attracting festival on our hands? Time will tell, but if so, you had better go and enjoy the wonders of Fusebox now, before it becomes a case of traffic headaches, and “it was cool before it was popular”.