Neworld Theatre

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Home page

http://www.neworldtheatre.com/index.html

Location

Vancouver 49° 15' 39.14" N, 123° 6' 50.23" W Arts Actor Dance Danse Media Arts Theatre Visual Arts Group

Manifesto

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"Neworld Theatre is an award-winning, Vancouver-based theatre company that creates, produces and tours new plays and performance events. We tell stories that reflect Canada's diversity in the broadest sense – cultural, linguistic, social and economic. We use popular forms to examine our lives in the context of who counts, who doesn't, and what our relationship is to the people we may think we aren't.

Since 1999, Neworld has won more than 20 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards (from over 50 nominations), the Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Vancouver Sun Innovation Award, the Seattle Times Footlight Award, the Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Award. Neworld's productions have been seen in major festivals across North American and in Europe. These include Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil, Mixie and the Halfbreeds, Adrift, Crime and Punishment and Asylum of the Universe. In 2009, Neworld also co-founded PL 1422 a cultural hub in East Vancouver co-managed with three other indie theatre companies.

In addition to its mainstage productions, Neworld produces a range of events, from cabaret nights to live readings to public lectures and interviews. Neworld also works closely with community groups, pairing professional artists with non-professionals from different communities to help them create performances that address their self-defined aspirations and concerns.

The company is led by Artistic Producers Marcus Youssef and Adrienne Wong."[1]

What Our Work is About

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• "Canada is one of the most multicultural countries in the world, and Vancouver one of its most multicultural cities. Our plays are about the many stories, issues and ideas that emerge from this unique place and time.
• Neworld productions investigate borders between cultures, styles, and disciplines
• Neworld tells stories that reflect our city's diversity in the broadest terms possible - cultural, linguistic, economic and social - and examine our lives in the context of who counts, who doesn't, and what our relationship is to the people we think we aren't.
• We create plays and performances that are about “here” (Canada) and “there” (other parts of the world) and “us” (people we identify with) and “them” (people we are told are different from us)"[2]

Achievements

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• "Neworld Theatre has received the Alcan Performing Arts Award, Canada's largest arts commissioning prize, the Vancouver Sun Innovation Award, the Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Award, the Seattle Times Footlight Award, and 18 Jessie Richardson Awards (which are Vancouver's professional theatre prizes)
• Our shows have been presented by major festivals including the Magnetic North Theatre Festival (Canada's premiere English-language theatre festival), the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and our work has toured locally and to On The Boards in Seattle, WA and the 2008 International Festival of Authors, Brno, Czech Republic
• We are one of four companies (Boca del Lupo, Electric Company & Rumble Productions) who have come together to found Progress Lab 1422, a shared administrative and rehearsal space in East Vancouver
• Neworld is one of the most recognized small theatre companies in Canada, and is cited by both the National Post and the Globe and Mail as one of the companies driving the nationally recognized renaissance in independent Vancouver theatre"[3]

History

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"Neworld Theatre was the lovechild of Founding Artistic Producer Camyar Chai, who conceived the company while at the University of British Columbia, birthing it with co-conspirators Mara Coward and Tom Scholte.

From these humble beginnings Neworld Theatre has remained pretty humble. An artist-run company with 2 Artistic Producers and a full-time Managing Producer, we ROCK THE WORLD.

First productions were primarily folk-style adaptations of classical Iranian texts and/or myths, reflecting both Camyar's cultural background and the sizeable population of Persian Canadians in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver. While mostly produced with no resources (ie: Camyar's credit card), over two or three years these shows developed a strong following in the Iranian-Canadian community, regularly selling out the 250 seat Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Early productions included Love, Quest and Evening in a Strange Land.

Numerous productions of the multiple-award winning plays about Mordecai Vanunu by Camyar Chai and Mara Coward, and a national tour of the show with Rumble Productions (www.rumble.org), marked the company's first foray into non-didactic, politically-engaged productions and national touring, both of which have become company signatures.

Devil Box Cabaret (1999), a site-specific collective creation based on the play The Four Boxes by Iranian writer Bahram Beyzaee, marked both a move toward a more hybridized performance style and Neworld's full emergence as a significant company in the independent theatre scene. Winning numerous awards and selling out its run, Devil Box anticipated the move to site-specific work that has dominated recent independent Vancouver theatre.

For the next three years (1999 – 2002) the company produced the Leaky Heaven Circus. What was meant to be a 'one-off' millennium project became a four-show phenomenon that culminated in the formation of a new company, The Leaky Heaven Performance Society (www.leakyheaven.com).

In 2005, longtime Neworld associate Marcus Youssef became an Artistic Producer, and Adrienne Wong joined the AP team soon after. In 2007, Camyar took on a new challenge as Executive Director of Leave Out Violence (LOVE) BC, and Marcus and Adrienne engaged Managing Producer Kirsty Munro."[4]

People

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Marcus Youssef- Artistic Director

Marcus' plays include Winners and Losers (with James Long), How My Love Has Affected You, the war-on-terror satires Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil and Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings (with Guillermo Verdecchia and Camyar Chai), Everyone (Unmet Obligation), Adrift, 3299: Forms in Order, Peter Panties (with Niall McNeil), Apathy House and A Line in the Sand (with Guillermo Verdecchia), as well as installation performance events for HIVE's I and II, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. They have been presented or produced across North America, Australia and Europe, translated into Czech and Italian, and are published by Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. Awards: Alcan Performing Arts, Chalmer's Canadian Play, Arts Club Silver Commission, Seattle Times Footlight, Vancouver Sun Critics' Choice Innovation, as well as numerous Jessie (Vancouver), Masque (Montreal) and Dora (Toronto) awards and nominations. He teaches and lectures across Canada, and in 04/05, he was an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Community Development at Concordia University in Montreal. Marcus currently sits on the advisory board of the Canadian Theatre Review, is an active advocate for the centrality of culture to Vancouver's urban future, and in 2009 co-founded PL 1422, a co-operative 6,000 sq. foot rehearsal and production centre in East Van. He is artistic director of Neworld Theatre, western artistic associate of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa and on faculty at Capilano University. Marcus lives in the Commercial Drive area with his partner, Amanda and their sons Oscar and Zak. [5]