NeXt Company Theatre of Niagara is fully incorporated as a not-for-profit organization with charitable status. Founded in April of 2010, our company has quickly grown to include five diverse streams of programming. NeXt Company Theatre is dedicated to the passionate and informed creation of new work; to documenting Niagara’s people, creatures and places; to the production of beautiful, unique musical theatre; to mentoring emerging artists, technicians and producers; and to training the neXt generation of stage actors.
We are committed to developing new theatrical creation, as well as the presentation of high quality musical theatre. New theatrical creation involves telling compelling stories that resonate for contemporary audiences using challenging and innovative theatrical means. We draw on the extensive range of theatrical talent and ability available regionally, and frequently collaborate with artists, technicians and producers from beyond. Our musical theatre mandate is to provide Niagara’s audiences with a balance between very accessible and fun musical theatre and some of the more demanding contemporary music theatre available in larger theatrical centres.
An integral component of next Company Theatre’s mandate is to employ theatrical means to ‘document’ the people, places, and creatures of Niagara. We have adopted a documentary approach as it permits us to 1) collaborate extensively with recognized or emergent groups as well as 2) allows such collaborations to result in the people involved ‘speaking for themselves’ with the assistance of trained artists and facilitators. Based on our previous experience with these types of project, having groups ‘speak for themselves’ manifests in increased solidarity among participants, a clearer sense of identity—both collective and individual—as well as a heightened sense of agency. That these activities are happening in a highly aesthetic milieu only increases the intensity of the experience for participants, and the resulting documentary works involve audiences in a potentially significant and affective fashion. Although not explicitly ‘political’ in their orientation, we believe these kinds of projects actively promote community integration and complexity, increase communication across ethnic and socio-economic lines, and draw the wider community into reflexive discussion and reflection about its own composition, priorities and values. Our first events have included work in collaboration with migrant workers, with future productions involving collaboration with various other groups in the region to help generate social and cultural sustainability through collective artistic practice.
Similarly, our mentorship programs have involved general management interns, as well as workshop series geared towards Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth-at-risk that fuse traditional improvisational and theatrical exercises with Aboriginal philosophies and life-ways in order to help develop self-confidence and self-awareness for the participants. The aims of these and other types of creative mentorship involve exploring issues of interpersonal power relations; the right and ability to tell one’s own story; collaborative and co-emergent forms of creation; conflict resolution; team building; body-image awareness; auto-ethnography; appreciation of nature’s power; and the celebration of spontaneity.
Finally, we have partnered with Magnetic North Theatre Festival and other collaborators to feature a series of national discussions on the subject of acting training in Canada. Bringing together professional acting trainers, directors, and administrators from across the country, plus some international observers, these discussions are geared towards provoking those of us in Canadian theatre to keep pursuing the most creative ways possible of offering intense theatrical experience to Canadian audiences.
NeXt Company Theatre
NeXt Company Theatre of Niagara is fully incorporated as a not-for-profit organization with charitable status. Founded in April of 2010, our company has quickly grown to include five diverse streams of programming. NeXt Company Theatre is dedicated to the passionate and informed creation of new work; to documenting Niagara’s people, creatures and places; to the production of beautiful, unique musical theatre; to mentoring emerging artists, technicians and producers; and to training the neXt generation of stage actors.
We are committed to developing new theatrical creation, as well as the presentation of high quality musical theatre. New theatrical creation involves telling compelling stories that resonate for contemporary audiences using challenging and innovative theatrical means. We draw on the extensive range of theatrical talent and ability available regionally, and frequently collaborate with artists, technicians and producers from beyond. Our musical theatre mandate is to provide Niagara’s audiences with a balance between very accessible and fun musical theatre and some of the more demanding contemporary music theatre available in larger theatrical centres.
An integral component of next Company Theatre’s mandate is to employ theatrical means to ‘document’ the people, places, and creatures of Niagara. We have adopted a documentary approach as it permits us to 1) collaborate extensively with recognized or emergent groups as well as 2) allows such collaborations to result in the people involved ‘speaking for themselves’ with the assistance of trained artists and facilitators. Based on our previous experience with these types of project, having groups ‘speak for themselves’ manifests in increased solidarity among participants, a clearer sense of identity—both collective and individual—as well as a heightened sense of agency. That these activities are happening in a highly aesthetic milieu only increases the intensity of the experience for participants, and the resulting documentary works involve audiences in a potentially significant and affective fashion. Although not explicitly ‘political’ in their orientation, we believe these kinds of projects actively promote community integration and complexity, increase communication across ethnic and socio-economic lines, and draw the wider community into reflexive discussion and reflection about its own composition, priorities and values. Our first events have included work in collaboration with migrant workers, with future productions involving collaboration with various other groups in the region to help generate social and cultural sustainability through collective artistic practice.
Similarly, our mentorship programs have involved general management interns, as well as workshop series geared towards Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth-at-risk that fuse traditional improvisational and theatrical exercises with Aboriginal philosophies and life-ways in order to help develop self-confidence and self-awareness for the participants. The aims of these and other types of creative mentorship involve exploring issues of interpersonal power relations; the right and ability to tell one’s own story; collaborative and co-emergent forms of creation; conflict resolution; team building; body-image awareness; auto-ethnography; appreciation of nature’s power; and the celebration of spontaneity.
Finally, we have partnered with Magnetic North Theatre Festival and other collaborators to feature a series of national discussions on the subject of acting training in Canada. Bringing together professional acting trainers, directors, and administrators from across the country, plus some international observers, these discussions are geared towards provoking those of us in Canadian theatre to keep pursuing the most creative ways possible of offering intense theatrical experience to Canadian audiences.