Whether taken as a separate festival entity or as the largest hub of the upcoming Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Cannonball is an inventive performance art force of nature, one embracing over 150 shows of contemporary circus, provocative live art and social-sexual-political revolution.
Cannonball’s Sept. 1 to 30 run across Philadelphia venues — including the Maas Building, Icebox Project Space, Fidget and Liberty Lands Park — promises to be as explosive as its name, and twice as devastating.
For year three, Cannonball continues to disrupts the usual live presenting models with its focus on artist-to-artist curation, pooling and redistributing resources to provide high-impact production possibilities for under-resourced performances, and building a sustainable arts ecosystem from the ground up in accordance with Founding Producers Ben Grinberg and Mae West’s initial goals for the fest.
“Working with Cannonball now reminds me of presenting through the Fringe Fest when it first started,” says Philly playwright-actor Jared Delaney, whose new independent theatre company, 100th Meridian (with Charlotte Northeast and Damon Bonetti) debuts at Cannonball with ‘They’ve All Gone and We’ll Go Too’, Sept. 5-10.
“Cannonball is very old-school Fringe,” says Bonetti.
Tell Grinberg and West that veteran and newbie artists are applauding Cannonball 2023’s old-school-Fringe-vibe, and they’re pleased.
“We love to hear that,” says Grinberg. “I consider my first Philly Fringes in the early 20-teens some of my most cherished memories, and have heard many stories from vets who have heard about the magic of earlier Fringe. I think that there’s a palpable energy around Cannonball. But it’s also a new thing, with a different model, and we will continue to challenge ourselves to push our boundaries, take risks, and reinvent ourselves.”
West says that Cannonball’s artist-centered model of resource pooling and redistribution, paired with its back-to-back production structure, has positioned their events uniquely in the Fringe landscape, locally and nationally.
“We created this out of our own needs and desires as self-producing artists,” they said. “We begin conversations with ‘What do you need and how can we help?’ That cultivates a deep sense of trust and camaraderie with our community of artists and audiences alike, and translates to a vibrant, invigorating energy during the festival.
“We hold tightly to our values: Wild, Experimental, Loose, Delicious, and Abundant, or as we like to say, ‘Pack it in.’ This means welcoming new ideas and big risks, co-creating community through curiosity, indulging in and celebrating all our community has to offer, and actively making space for anyone and everyone who wants to climb aboard Cannonball.”
As artist-administrators, Cannonball’s Grinberg and West state the hardest thing to remember can be to actually rehearse their own shows — West’s ‘$7 Girl’, for example — but that it is also the greatest possible stress relief, to go from juggling countless tasks, from updating websites to ordering more soap for the bathrooms, to just fully present in movement and creation.
“I think it’s a super important part of Cannonball’s identity that our producers, curators, administrators, are all artists themselves,” says Grinberg. “It keeps our perspective really grounded in reality… We thrive in the chaos and, let’s face it, we wouldn’t want it any other way.”
West notes that offering smaller, personal opportunities to as many artists as possible, rather than larger opportunities to fewer artists, has informed the niches of performance that Fringe audiences will find at the Cannonball hub. There is ‘Sing the Rainbow’ by Ants on a Log, an “uplifting concert for queer families”; ‘The Torch Runners’ by Alonzo Magsino, “a gorgeous dance piece exploring embodying personal legacies”; and ‘C$%^G INTO THE METAVERSE’ by Crackheadbarney, an hour of “pure, raunchy chaos”; and ‘ReFlection’ by Toni Cannon, the BIPOC circus story of self-acceptance through the lens of a Black transmasculine experience.
“We are Cannonball — from the moment we wake up, to the minute we go to sleep, and often throughout our dreams,” says West. “We have given so much to this beautiful beast of an event, because we know how much we all receive in return.”
Information and tickets for Cannonball can be found at cannonballfestival.org For audience members interested in volunteering at Cannonball, email admin@thealmanac.us
