manifesto
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.
What Our Work is About:
- 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)
Achievements
- 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
