Archive Highlight: "Theatrical Snacks" with Jeff Evans

Hey there!

Things are all-hands-on-deck on the high-seas, with Undersigned's appearance at Overlook Film Festival barely behind us, and Fair Trade heading to the La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls Festival at the end of this month! Madness!

Things being what they are (see aforementioned "madness"), we're doing a non-traditional month: skipping reading list, and swapping the Archive Highlight for a preview.

This summer, I'm teaming up with Philly based Theatermaker and Polymath Jeff Evans (recently known for his gorgeous and heartbreaking show Artifacts of No Consequence) to curate a small, bite-sized performance track at the 2023 Cannonball Festival. We're inviting artists to apply for a $600 stipend to explore big ideas at small scale, and offering production support, a collaborative cohort, box office and a venue. Essentially, I wanted to make the ideal petri dish for other artists to explore the kind of scale and production models that have made shows like The Telelibrary, Undersigned, Fair Trade, and IF WE WIN not just possible but sustainable enough to support each other as they develop and grow.

The episode above is a great cut of a larger conversation Jeff and I had exploring what makes a strong application to this production fund (affectionately dubbed "snack track" by the team. It pairs well with some internal writing Jeff and I both did, trying to articulate the kind of "scrappy efficiency" we wanted to encourage applicants to play with.

I've included that language below. If you know Philly Artists who may wish to submit (or simply know artists who are curious about small scale projects that grow LARGE and deep with iteration, send them to the application page!

Submissions close April 16th

(or maybe your friend just wants to listen to the conversation here - resources shouldn't be paywalled, and if you've been stealing everything I ever wrote and redistributing it, may I direct you to my formal statement on such lawless generosity)


That's all from me for now - it's a JAM-PACKED month, so there will be plenty to talk about in the next few...

Until then, thanks as ever for your support. I'm proud to have the chance to take everything I've learned these past 3 years and give other artists opportunities to pursue their own experiments. Their work (and mine) wouldn't be possible without you.

- Yannick


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At its heart, the "snack track" is about re-examining the resources we have available to us as artists, and reassessing what we need to make a big impact on our audiences and our practice.

We don't expect every artist to maximize their use of every resource, but we want to see artists making creative, strategic, and exciting use of at least one of them. These are the resources we believe Cannonball and this production track in particular offer that we hope to see capitalized on:

- In between spaces

The snack track will take place everywhere BUT the theater/studio spaces of Cannonball. We're looking for artists who want to learn more about filling those niches in the ecosystem - or who have projects that benefit from small and/or unconventional performance spaces.

- Small audiences

In-between spaces have a limit on how many bodies can gather at a time. What do artists propose to solve this through experiments in run-time, access, or medium - or to capitalize on the intimacy of small crowds?

- Small footprint

Are artists making proposals that embrace the small-scale? This could be in terms of space (the work takes place in a closet, or shares an area with other activities or services), or in terms of time (many repetitions of short run-times, durational performances, non-captive audiences).

- Audiences

What exchanges does the artist propose with their audience? Do participants have an opportunity to change, affect, or even grow the performance? Does the piece become larger or more developed each time it is performed? Will the time spent performing meaningfully inform or expand the larger project?

- Finite budget

Does the vision of the artist reflect the amount of funding available? Have they thoughtfully articulated something that could be well-executed with the money available? Or are they devising above the provided means, ignoring or compromising on the practical limitations?

We often tell ourselves, "My budget is small, but it's going to look like a million dollars!" What if the show doesn't have to look like a million dollars? What is it like to create specifically to a smaller scale? Can the piece be small at the scale of performance, but large at other scales - the scale of human connection, of imagination, of duration over years?