The Siminovitch Theatre Basis has awarded the 2025 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre to Ravi Jain, Founder and Co-Creative Director of Toronto’s Why Not Theatre. The Prize is Canada’s highest valued theatre award.
The Prize is given to a mid-career skilled artist who goes past the standard, elevating the artwork kind itself. The recipient is awarded a $100,000 money prize, together with public recognition.
Ravi Jain has been constructing Why Not Theatre for nearly 20 years, with an emphasis on how tales can form our world.
“As we develop up, our creativeness will get constrained, marketed to, and now, algorithm-ed in ways in which cut back us, divide us, and power us into restricted methods of relating and understanding one another. Our work liberates the creativeness, finds prospects the place others don’t, and divulges that different methods of being are potential.
“At its coronary heart, our work is a apply of imagining a greater world, rooted within the perception that if we will think about it, we will construct it,” says Ravi Jain in a press release.
Ravi Jain and Why Not Theatre
Since 2007, Why Not Theatre has tackled social problems with the trendy period, and pushed the boundaries of standard storytelling on stage.
Jain based the corporate on returning to Toronto, when he discovered that, regardless of his success in working in New York and London, he couldn’t even get an audition in his outdated residence city. It spurred him to launch the corporate as a substitute for the standard organizations who’d rejected him.
Jain has created greater than 40 productions and collaborations which were carried out throughout 5 continents. His work typically excursions globally after premiering in Canada.
Examples embody a radically reimagined model of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, What Brings You In — one in every of a number of performs that included digital efficiency, on this case, a music-driven piece primarily based on various sources that included discuss remedy, hypnotherapy, dreamwork, sandplay, somatics, and reiki — and the multi-award winning massive scale Mahabharata, which premiered on the Shaw, and subsequently went on tour to promote out the Barbican Theatre in London, and the Lincoln Centre in New York. Competition.
Jain’s earlier accolades embody the 2012 Pauline McGibbon Award for Rising Director and the 2016 Canada Council John Hirsch Prize for path and in 2022, The Johanna Metcalf Basis Performing Arts Prize.
Siminovitch Protégé Prize
Recognizing the essential function that mentorship can play to a creating theatre artist, annually, the winner of the Siminovitch Prize is invited to decide on an rising artist who will obtain $25,000, together with a yr of teaching and recommendation.
Ravi selected Miriam Fernandes, Why Not Theatre’s Co-Creative Director, as his protégé. Collectively, the pair has made important contributions to Canada’s performing arts scene which have had each a nationwide and worldwide influence.
Like Jain, Fernandes is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
The Toronto-based artist has labored as an actor, director, and theatre-maker throughout the globe. Appearing credit embody Jungle Ebook (WYRD/Kidoons), Animal Farm (Soulpepper Theatre), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Dinner with the Gods (Wolf and Wallflower, Sydney AU), The Snow Queen and A Sunday Affair (Theatre New Brunswick), The Residing (Summerworks Efficiency Competition), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre).
As a director and theatre creator, her credit embody Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Competition, Norway) The First Time I Noticed the Sea (YVA Firm, Norway).
Acceptance Speech
From Ravi Jain’s acceptance speech:
“As I looked for what to say, I saved serious about Elinore Siminovitch.
“Elinore was a playwright, and regardless of how onerous she tried, nobody would produce her performs. Her voice by no means noticed the skilled phases in Canada. After I heard her story, it made me indignant. Elinore was an artist, however she wasn’t given an opportunity. She was a girl, she was a feminist, and her gender and politics weren’t welcome. So she was dismissed. Ignored. I felt indignant on the injustice of what she skilled. It’s an anger that burns scorching in me, as a result of what Elinore skilled is similar factor I’ve seen finish many artists’ careers too early — after they aren’t given the house, or sources, or the platform for his or her voice. It’s a rage that I’ve battled with for many years – and it has nearly consumed me on a number of events.
“Anger was the hearth, a vital gas for me to create space for my inventive voice – as a result of from day one right here in Canada, I needed to struggle for house and show my value. The Canadian inventive panorama in 2007 wasn’t all that completely different from what Elinore skilled a long time earlier than — it didn’t have the creativeness to know what to do with me.
“I began Why Not Theatre as a result of I wished to problem each assumption that folks had of me, my id, the work I might make, how I might make it, and the way far I might go. And I wished the identical for all of the Elinores of my time. I wished to point out that there was one other manner to do that factor we name theatre, and I wished us to be inquisitive about what it might be; if we modify WHO tells the story, and HOW we inform that story — we truly unlock Theatre’s superpower; the Creativeness.”
Discover the complete textual content here.
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a artistic writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
