2024 PANEL PICKS
RECIPIENTS
Images of 2023 Special Presentation Track Recipients by Wide Eyed Studios
Tickets On Sale Now!
Cannonball 2024 runs September 1-29, 2024!
BIPOC NEW WORK TRACK
A Funeral for Death Machines
by Dusky Projects
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WI-MOTO NYOKA is a horror and sci-fi writer. She is the founder of Dusky Projects, creating and producing horror & sci-fi projects for young adult and adult audiences.
Awards and honors include: Independent Public Media Grant recipient, Ignyte Award Winner for Best Fiction Podcast 2023, Stowe Story Labs selected project, Nightmares Film Festival Best Short Screenplay Award Winner, 13 Horror Screenplay Award Winner, Oregon Short Film Festival Best Horror Teleplay Award Winner and more. She is a published author and a regular contributor to The Last Girls Club. She holds a BFA in Music Theater from the University of the Arts and an MFA for Performance & Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College.
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Told from the perspective of The Gun and The Bullet on their last night on Earth, A Funeral for The Death Machines is an immersive musical experience moving from Gospel to House music, transitioning these objects from symbols of harm to one of transformation.
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Bodhisattva Beer Run
by Glenn Potter-Takata & evan ray suzuki
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Glenn Potter-Takata and evan ray suzuki met while studying at Sarah Lawrence College and have been collaborating since 2018. evan and Glenn create body-centered performance works that critique a globalized Japanese consumer culture in post-Internment America. Their performances often take the shape of live multimedia works, dance performances, or improvisations wearing giant Pikachu costumes. Glenn and evan studied butoh under Kota Yamazaki and Mina Nishimura, and have developed their own practice in the butoh genre. Their work has been shown in the NYC-area at Center for Performance Research, New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix, Movement Research at Judson Church, WestFest Dance Festival, Trotter&Sholer, Mizuma & Kips, Not Your Mother’s Pan-Asian Festival, and the Amanda+James Summer Happenings Series, among other places. Glenn is the recipient of the MAP Fund Award and has been an artist-in-residence with Movement Research, Gibney Dance Center, Rogers Art Loft, and CUNY Dance Initiative at Lehman College. He is currently a teacher of sound and video design for live performance at Sarah Lawrence College and the curator of Butoh What. evan’s work has received support from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Ars Nova, New Dance Alliance, JACK, 98 Art Collective, and the Centro Umbro di Residenze Artistiche in Umbria, Italy. evan is a member of La MaMa’s Obie Award-winning Great Jones Repertory Company and sometimes makes movies. @grons__ @evanxray
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Bodhisattva Beer Run is a butoh dance work with integrated video projection that contemplates the performance of gender across a multi-generational Asian-American culture transition through the seemingly contradictory nature of a Buddhist worldview and beer-fueled acts of masculinity.
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Blue Silk
by Salvador Castillo Placensia V a.k.a Cinco
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Salvador Castillo Placensia V (he/him), also known as Cinco, is a Mexican-American artist based in Philadelphia specializing in immersive performance, new technologies, and puppetry. Currently, Cinco serves as the assistant production manager at Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA. He was recently the Artist-in-Residence at the Heller Center for Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he continued the development of Blue Silk. Cinco, together with New Paradise Laboratories and Janani Balasubramanian, helped produce How to Get to The River, which was funded by the Pew Foundation through the Academy of Natural Sciences. Cinco is a regular collaborator and assistant producer with Janani and has held several residency positions with The Public Theater on their project, The Gift, which premiered at the Lincoln Center and is continuing to tour. Cinco would like to dedicate this work to Max. He is the inspiration for Blue Silk, a story about the fragility of the body and the particularly cruel damage that unchecked substances can inflict. A person’s pursuit for happiness is complicated, ours included.
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Blue Silk is an enchanting puppet fairy tale that captivates audiences with its otherworldly charm while critically examining the things we consume, rely on, and are addicted to, and encourages us to consider what is truly sustainable for our bodies and by extension, the Earth.
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For Us, By Us, Eat Us, Save Us
by Wherehouse
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Taj Rauch is an immersive storyteller with an appetite for learning anything he can get his hands on. With a background in playwriting, cinematography, installation and projection design, he’s convinced himself that world building is best done by exploring every corner of creativity.
Presently, you can find him 3D scanning environments and turning them into Augmented Reality experiences. His work has been featured in Fringe Festival, PAFA Museum, IceBox Project Space, Ministry of Awe, Vox Populi Gallery, and on The Today Show. He is currently a professor of Media Design at the University of the Arts.
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Discover an ever-evolving exhibition showcasing the enigmatic brilliance of Jefferson Huxley, the art world’s best kept secret.
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WITS
by InnissENT
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InnissENT is composed of twin brothers, Christopher and Charles Inniss. They are writers, musical theater composers, filmmakers and storytellers dedicated to crafting narratives on the Black experience.
The duo’s original musical WITS is the recipient of Cannonball’s 2024 BIPOC New Work Presentation Track and will be performed during this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. WITS also earned a workshop production in 2023 as a part of Polyphone Festival at University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
In addition to their musicals, InnissENT has received commissions and accolades for their short films including semifinalist status at the Dumbo Film festival.
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WITS is a dance driven musical that explores the anxieties of two groups of Black folks at the cusp of adulthood, highlighting the soul and spirit that characterizes so many Black people in vibrant communities of color.
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CSAW AWARD
Black Joy
by Twin Eclipse
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Twin Eclipse, NYC’s Premier Black Aerialist Duo, is Queen Ravenden (She/her) and Jon Joni (He/they). Joni was born and raised in North Carolina, while Queen grew up between Baltimore, MD, and St. Croix. Since forming in 2015, they have performed with artists such as Denzel Curry, Kacey Musgraves, and Nitty Scott. They are trained aerial acrobats and dancers with backgrounds in Caribbean, African, modern, contemporary, ballet, and hip-hop dance.
Twin Eclipse's artwork embarks on a creative journey that vividly represents their love for African culture, Black culture, and the resilience of African and Indigenous people here in the USA. The artwork revolves around ancestral celebration and cultural struggles, aiming to heal the past traumas of these cultures while presenting them to a wider audience in a visually inspiring and historically contextual way. Twin Eclipse creates art as a tribute to those who have passed, carrying on their stories. Their melanated bodies symbolize the bodies that have been oppressed and abused and yet have risen above it all, both literally through aerial and figuratively. Queen Ravenden and Jon Joni stand as a beacon of light, honoring the ancestors who have come before us and inspiring generations to come.
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Black Joy is a multi-disciplinary ancestral journey through Blackness. Fusing circus, poetry, dance, and mask work, Twin Eclipse weaves together their stories as people of African descent and the journey taken to be where they are today. Black Joy will celebrate and honor those who have come before us, are here today, and those who we have yet to see.
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PERFORMANCE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES COHORT
O, Tomato!
by The Exuberance
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The Exuberance curates public art events to catalyze creation and connection, led by Marisol Soledad.
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O, Tomato! is a saucy, sensory, dance theater celebration of a widely-beloved, yet often misidentified, fruit. Created in partnership with local urban gardeners, O, Tomato! invites audiences to play, move, laugh, sing, squish, slice, and savor within community. ¡Ay, tomate!
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G(r)een
by The Hags
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The Hags are Laura C. Schmidt, Grace Lazarz, and Huiping Tina Zhong, three artists who have come from NYC, Indiana, and Beijing to study at Pig Iron Theatre School. Shared enthusiasms for the Philadelphia art scene, devising theatre, and young audiences brought them together to work on this project, G(r)een. Laura, Grace, and Tina are excited to infuse their own small piece of the fringe festival with curiosity, play, and bravery.
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Inspired by the personal experience of coping with a speech impediment, G(r)een follows a brave child who loves nature, but struggles to describe it. This playful story encourages us all to accept ourselves as we are, and find unlikely friendships under the kitchen sink.
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Bears Tonight
Andrew Simon
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Andrew Simon is a theatre-maker and educator based in Philadelphia. He works as a teaching artist and creates shows for audiences of all ages. He is the founder of Barn Arts, a nonprofit arts organization that hosted over 700 artists developing new work on an island in Maine in a barn that used to be his grandmother’s antique shop. www.andrewmsimon.com
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A family of bears must choose between the opportunity of a lifetime and hibernation. Bears Tonight is a show about growing together, making music, and letting go.
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Team Mighty!
by Alyssa Bigbee & Kane Duvene
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Alyssa Bigbee is an innovative dancer, aerialist, and dance therapist blending grace and strength to defy gravity. With performances that captivate audiences worldwide, Alyssa choreography explores the depths of human emotion and the beauty of movement. As a mentor, she nurtures the next generation of artists, leaving an unforgettable mark on the world of dance and aerial arts.
Kane Duvene is a young artist on the rise with dreams of taking over the theatre world. Kane has studied guitar at Settlement Music School and acting at Arden Theatre. Kane is a storyteller making his first debut in Cannonball with his production with hopes to create his own shows.
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An unusual superhero duo teams up to stop The Most Dangerous Villain In The World. Team Mighty! is a participatory circus performance where everyone learns to work together to feel powerful, co-created by a real-life mother and son duo. Come dressed as your own superhero!
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Hundred Acre Park
by My Mother Once Read…
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My Mother Once Read is a traveling children’s theatre company that brings contemporary but beloved stories to both the children in our lives, and the children in ourselves.
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Get lost with Pooh, Piglet, and the gang in this folksy musical retelling of A.A. Milne’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh tale, with puppets! The Hundred Acre Wood becomes a Hundred Acre Park, adapted for today’s young ones growing up in an age of climate change and urban sprawl.
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AL-BUSTAN AWARD FOR SWANA ARTISTS
Othello (vs The Military Industrial Complex)
by Zaina Yasmin Dana
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Zaina Yasmin Dana is a Palestinian director and organizer based in North Philadelphia. Her recent production of American Fast by Kareem Fahmy at InterAct Theater was nominated for a Barrymore award for Outstanding Original Production. She is the Resident Director of Eat Purple Theater Co., a new theater-making collective in the city. Previously projects at Cannonball and Philly Fringe include Johann Johann: or thee wurst dinner partie, an fully-realized food-fighting adaptation of a 14th c. sex comedy and Facepaint, the story of a clown whose face-paint won’t come off and the destruction of his marriage because of it. In the past, she had the pleasure of directing R3TURN: A Palestinian Pop-Punk Musical alongside other Palestinian artists and Broadway’s Robi Hager. She dedicates the rest of her time to uplifting the plight of Palestinian refugees through her work with UNRWA and UNRWA USA as the Project Manager of the Gaza 5K walk/run for mental health.
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This explosive adaptation weaves in firsthand narratives and EDM rave pulse to radically reimagine Shakespeare’s Othello as a Palestinian ex-Muslim soldier serving in the Israeli military in 2014 during the height of the previous military incursion in Gaza.
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A Bach'eh who wanted to become Bach
by Deniz Khateri
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Deniz is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her works experiment with form and they focus on memory, grief, immigration and the concept of home. Her plays have been performed in several national and international festivals. She has written and directed experimental music-theatre projects that challenge the status quo and current vernacular of the theatre and modern opera scene. Her performances have been praised as “excellent” (The Boston Globe) , “remarkable on every level”(Ewing Reviewing) and “Fascinating” (Broadway World LA). A former resident artist at Center at West Park and a resident playwright at the New Perspectives theatre women’s play lab, she has also designed and directed international shows, video arts and shadow puppetry visuals for companies such as OperFrankfurt, Guerilla Opera, Dinosaur Annex, and Long Beach Opera.Holding an MA in Theatre from City University of New York,she has trained in master classes and workshops with prominent international artists including Peter Brook,Richard Schechner, Paul Zaloom and Gardzienice theatre company of Poland. She is an adjunct lecturer at Hunter college and Queens borough community college of CUNY. Deniz has performed extensively in her hometown Tehran as well as on stages of prominent theatre companies of Boston and New York.
Awarded by UNIMA-USA for “excellence in writing for the art of puppetry” she has been the recipient of NYSCA award for her new project “Husks from Iran”, as well as the NYFA fund for her Oscar-qualified documentary animated web series, “Diasporan”, for which she is the writer, director, animator and singer and explores the daily struggles of immigrants. (www.denizkhateri.com)
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This solo, multi-disciplinary performance uses live musical instruments as puppets, along with shadow play and poetry to follow an Iranian immigrant as she grapples with questions around assimilation and whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy.
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The Bumbling Foreigner
by Sohrab Haghverdi
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Sohrab is an only child from Iran who has specialized in being a foreigner in America. He schemes (in a good way), performs (in a brilliant way), and thinks creatively to perfectly fit in within this new American environment. He is an absurdist performer/writer and lifestyle Clown. He has had memorable moments in the Philly community first as “The Boy Who Mailed Himself to America'' and then as the one and only 9/11MAN. The main questions that motivate him to participate in the world as a theatre artist are “Why is there Being?” and “if I’m not special, then who is?”, “God?”. He has performed in devised shows at the Public Theatre, Pig Iron, and is in collaboration with Theatre Companies like Lighting Rod Special and Swim Pony. He is currently in a collaboration with an ancient artist and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273).
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The Bumbling Foreigner does not want to tell you about his exile from Iran and his trials with stage four cancer to evoke your sympathy. Instead, he will translate his genius into something digestible. This is an absurd comedy solo. The Foreigner will eat hot dogs and will not drink his own urine.
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PHILADELPHIA THEATRE COMPANY TEXT AND DRAMATURGY COHORT
Geometry: Conversations with Euclid
by Rae Guo
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Rae is a circus performer from New Jersey. After falling in love with cyr wheel in 2017, she's finally performing a full length, one-woman show featuring her love for both circus and mathematics. She hopes to inspire new creatives to tell stories combining different aspects of themselves and encourage people to reach out and connect over shared experiences.
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Geometry: A Conversation with Euclid follows a girl's relationship with geometry through her life using circus as a medium. Come explore and learn with her as she first discovers geometry in elementary school, struggles with it in high school, and finally understands and expands her view in college.
Using cyr wheel as the medium to explore different concepts in geometry, we will touch on different mathematical concepts as we reimagine how to conceptualize math in a performance setting. Created with all types of audience members in mind, Geometry: A Conversation with Euclid has something for everyone no matter their knowledge or interest in mathematics. Whether you're a professional mathematician or an amateur, a student or teacher, or someone who just enjoys circus, we welcome you to explore with us as we share our story with you.
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Natural Causes: A Reading
by Gum Preston
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Coming Soon!
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A staged reading of my work-in-progress script, Natural Causes. It's a full length script which is 90% complete as of now, and which I'm in the process of sending to readers who are industry professionals. I'm happy to share it in this state if you would like to read it!
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Coming Soon!
Dead Muse
by Adam Kerbel
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Coming Soon!
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Dead Muse is a wry and heartfelt journey into the shadows that haunt us all. Erotic misadventures, colliding family stories, grand embraces, and longing for escape intertwine in this visceral new solo performance written and performed by Almanac co-founder Adam Kerbel, where the audience lands inside the psyche of an artist hounded by an enigmatic Los Angeles.
Set against a backdrop of Hollywoods old ghosts, Dead Muse blurs the lines between truth and illusion. Dream visions transform into never-ending stage entrances. Rogue musical numbers bull the performer like runaway trains. In the absence of wings the dance takes cover in the intimacy of the audience and the arts of theatrical trickery. In this landscape, familial legacies reveal themselves as botched audition monologues and so many aborted attempts to make it big or just be loved: bombing at stand-up, flubbing dates, becoming a clown.
Through restless choreography, a whisper-quiet libretto, and an immersive soundscape that fills the space with the scratchings of inner thoughts, Dead Muse expresses itself in fits and hesitations with deadly accuracy. Sometimes we need to laugh at failure just to appreciate the attempt at believing in ones self. This show is made for the easily emotional, the strangely hopeful, and the quietly tormented who believe that there is more to this life than the bodies were trapped in. Rave on we shall do.
For two performances only, Adam offers his body as a vessel for consumption and deep love in a raw exploration of the artists condition. -
An Avalanche of 'No'- A Riff On Macbeth
by New Paradise Laboratories and Jeffrey Cousar
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Coming Soon!
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A solo theatrical performance highlighting an actors driving ambition to play Macbeth, Shakespeares man of ambition, par excellence. Complicating factor: the actor happens to be black.
33 years ago, Jeffrey Cousar witnessed the great Andre Braugher play Macbeth at the Philadelphia Drama Guild. He has been gripped by a desire to perform the role ever since. This drive has endured through thick and thin, through ups and downs, weathering the obstacles many encounter on an artistic journey. Braugher died in 2023. Therefore, Cousar now feels compelled to jump the life to come, as Macbeth puts it. Now or never.
Combining Shakespeares language with events from Cousars picaresque life, with its absurd calamities and unexpected glories, Avalanche of No will interweave DJ culture, the life of a real-life porter, custody battles, physicalized images of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and 3-card monte into a frank display of bravura storytelling. It will lead audiences into a confrontation of dream with reality, of destiny with real-world circumstance, all filtered through a lens of Afropessimism - experienced by many, recognizable by all. Finally, Cousar plays some of Macbeth, enough to reflect on the Scottish King as a brother of sorts, victim to the fickle mechanisms of destiny.
Co-written with and directed by veteran experimentalist Whit MacLaughlin, and produced by Squaroots and New Paradise Laboratories.
Trigger warning: the piece ends in a casual self-beheading, the actor slowly buried in a tiny but powerful avalanche of fluffy white snow.
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Trinity: a new play reading
by Nick Jonczak
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NICK JONCZAK
(he/him)
is a writer, director, and producer of live performance. He co-founded the Cannonball Festival, which centers peer-to-peer curation and redistributes resources to independent artists.
Nick's original scripts include
MAN OF LA MANCHIN (Winner, Christ Church Neighborhood House New Play Festival), DEATH HUSTLE (Semifinalist, Sundance Episodic Lab), and RUST (Finalist, Creative Capital).
As a producer, Nick has led more than 20 original, full-length, live productions, including massive outdoor performance events (Invisible River), sprawling immersive adventures (New Paradise Laboratories), bawdy funk bands (Red 40 and the Last Groovement), and intimate, experimental circus (Almanac Dance Circus Theatre).
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Four hundred years into the future, two men wake up on a far-away planet to find they must Prepare the Way for a spaceship full of colonists from Earth. If they fail, the last survivors of humanity will perish. Together they must overcome riddles, cannibals, and a strange obelisk that sees everything, including their barely-hidden hunger for each other. This new play asks: can we ever create a civilization free of our history?
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Coming soon!