The Siminovitch Theatre Foundation has awarded the 2025 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre to Ravi Jain, Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Toronto’s Why Not Theatre. The Prize is Canada’s highest valued theatre award.
The Prize is given to a mid-career professional artist who goes beyond the usual, elevating the art form itself. The recipient is awarded a $100,000 cash prize, along with public recognition.
Ravi Jain has been building Why Not Theatre for almost two decades, with an emphasis on how stories can shape our world.
“As we grow up, our imagination gets constrained, marketed to, and now, algorithm-ed in ways that reduce us, divide us, and force us into limited ways of relating and understanding each other. Our work liberates the imagination, finds possibilities where others don’t, and reveals that other ways of being are possible.
“At its heart, our work is a practice of imagining a better world, rooted in the belief that if we can imagine it, we can build it,” says Ravi Jain in a statement.
Since 2007, Why Not Theatre has tackled social issues of the modern era, and pushed the boundaries of conventional storytelling on stage.
Jain founded the company on returning to Toronto, when he found that, despite his success in working in New York and London, he couldn’t even get an audition in his old home town. It spurred him to launch the company as an alternative to the traditional organizations who’d rejected him.
Jain has created more than 40 productions and collaborations that have been performed across five continents. His work often tours globally after premiering in Canada.
Examples include a radically reimagined version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, What Brings You In — one of several plays that incorporated digital performance, in this case, a music-driven piece based on diverse sources that included talk therapy, hypnotherapy, dreamwork, sandplay, somatics, and reiki — and the multi-award winning large scale Mahabharata, which premiered at the Shaw, and subsequently went on tour to sell out the Barbican Theatre in London, and the Lincoln Centre in New York. Festival.
Jain’s previous accolades include the 2012 Pauline McGibbon Award for Emerging Director and the 2016 Canada Council John Hirsch Prize for direction and in 2022, The Johanna Metcalf Foundation Performing Arts Prize.
Recognizing the crucial role that mentorship can play to a developing theatre artist, each year, the winner of the Siminovitch Prize is invited to choose an emerging artist who will receive $25,000, along with a year of coaching and advice.
Ravi chose Miriam Fernandes, Why Not Theatre’s Co-Artistic Director, as his protégé. Together, the pair has made significant contributions to Canada’s performing arts scene which have had both a national and international impact.
Like Jain, Fernandes is a graduate of Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
The Toronto-based artist has worked as an actor, director, and theatre-maker across the globe. Acting credits include Jungle Book (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 Living (Summerworks Performance Festival), and Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre).
As a director and theatre creator, her credits include Nesen, (MiniMidiMaxi Festival, Norway) The First Time I Saw the Sea (YVA Company, Norway).
From Ravi Jain’s acceptance speech:
“As I searched for what to say, I kept thinking about Elinore Siminovitch.
“Elinore was a playwright, and no matter how hard she tried, no one would produce her plays. Her voice never saw the professional stages in Canada. When I heard her story, it made me angry. Elinore was an artist, but she wasn’t given a chance. She was a woman, she was a feminist, and her gender and politics were not welcome. So she was dismissed. Overlooked. I felt angry at the injustice of what she experienced. It’s an anger that burns hot in me, because what Elinore experienced is the same thing I’ve seen end many artists’ careers too early — when they aren’t given the space, or resources, or the platform for their voice. It is a rage that I have battled with for decades – and it has almost consumed me on multiple occasions.
“Anger was the fire, a necessary fuel for me to make space for my artistic voice – because from day one here in Canada, I had to fight for space and prove my worth. The Canadian artistic landscape in 2007 wasn’t all that different from what Elinore experienced decades before — it didn’t have the imagination to know what to do with me.
“I started Why Not Theatre because I wanted to challenge every assumption that people had of me, my identity, the work I would make, how I would make it, and how far I could go. And I wanted the same for all the Elinores of my time. I wanted to show that there was another way to do this thing we call theatre, and I wanted us to be curious about what it could be; if we change WHO tells the story, and HOW we tell that story — we actually unlock Theatre’s superpower; the Imagination.”
Find the full text here.
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