Ravi jain why not theatre

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Michelle Mohammed Producing Assistant. Erin Brandenburg grantwriting support. Heather Campbell bookkeeper. Bing VP of Chew. Joey Petcalf Intern. Jain has trained extensively. After attending high school in Toronto, he took off to London with the hope of becoming a famous actor. He was searching for training that spoke to him as a performer and dealt with contemporary theatre of the moment. There he learned to hustle, and because of his drive, he had the chance to work with some of the masters, like Mary Overlie, Bill Irwin, and Stephen Wangh.

Eventually, Jain made his way to a regional theatre company in Washington, putting him on the track to acting success. For the most part, he performed Shakespeare to half-asleep sixty- to seventy-year-olds, and he was miserable. But matinees drew a different crowd: inner-city black youth. To the actor, the disruption was unacceptable.

To Jain, it was what theatre was all about. That moment took him to Lecoq, an avant-garde theatre school in Paris, a place designed for creators. He returned home to Toronto a decade ago, and has been living and working here ever since, conversing with countless spectators.

Rather than limit himself to a single function—director, artistic director, producer, actor—Jain calls himself a theatre-maker. He embodies that multi-faceted role more than any other artist in Toronto, and with more zest, too. On top of directing and acting, Jain is the artistic director of Why Not Theatre, where he creates politically relevant work, constantly playing with the form of storytelling.

For the season at Shaw, he devised a two-part version of the Hindu epic, Mahabharata with Miriam Fernandes and Why Not Theatre, which unfortunately was cancelled because of the Covid19 pandemic. Jain has acted in classical plays such as Antigone , Hamlet and Othello , in New York, Athens and Paris, respectively, as well as in contemporary physical performances that engage in dance, visuals and multimedia, such as his company's co-production SPENT , an absurdist account of two executives who fall off the corporate ladder in a recession, which he co-wrote.

The Why Not Theatre production of A Brimful of Asha , which he wrote with his mother Asha , about her failed attempt to arrange a marriage for him in India, opened at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space in , with Jain playing himself and multiple roles, and Asha playing herself. It was remounted early in , after critical and popular acclaim, including a production at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa.

It has since toured in Canada and abroad. In , he was appointed to a three-year term as Associate Artistic Director of Soulpepper Theatre Company , but resigned before his term ended.