manifesto
Officially incorporated in 1994, Neworld Theatre is a professional, Vancouver-based theatre company that creates, develops, produces and tours new plays.
In addition, we produce a range of events, from cabaret nights (Bite of the Underground) to live readings of plays and poetry, to public lectures and interviews.
We also work with community groups, pairing professional artists with non-professionals from different communities who wouldn't normally be making new work. For example, in 2008 we worked with No One is Illegal (a migrant rights activist collective) creating short plays for demonstrations and community events with refugees and recent immigrants. This year we are working with Leave Out ViolencE (LOVE) BC and Rough House Productions creating multi-media shows with at-risk youth from inner-city Vancouver.
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
