The Cannonball — the most consistently experimental part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival — is roaring back with more than 600 performances in four venues, all within walking distance of each other, around Fishtown.
“There’s lots of energy around peer presentation,” said Ben Grinberg, core producer and program manager of the Cannonball Festival, which is a festival within the Fringe Festival and produced by Almanac Dance Circus Theatre. Many artists who bring their works to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival solve those issues on their own, but Cannonball performers can count on the crew provided for “space, web attention, technical support, a stage manager who designs the lights, runs the sound, and video crews,” Grinberg. “We have all of the shared resources.”Grinberg attributes the increase in Cannonball applications to a scarcity of other presenting opportunities for independent theater artists.
“We can pool resources ourselves and make these opportunities for ourselves,” with both artists and curators turning to Cannonball to both show and see new theater, dance, and circus in all their permutations.Cannonball raised money to underwrite grants for categories of artists or types of shows.