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Community Building Creation
December 17, 2024Creation is an act of gathering: ideas, people, places, a bit of magic. One of my ongoing preoccupations is how we trace the impacts of this gathering. I picture my fingers moving along imaginary lines, feeling microscopic and deep grooves that spread out like a web through the communities…
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Welcome to the NAC’s first radio play series: Irresistible Neighbourhoods
September 9, 2024When NAC English Theatre Associate Producer Judi Pearl approached me about co-producing a series of radio plays, I was thrilled. My love for radio drama dates back to my teenage years, when I first tuned into CHUM Radio to listen to Theatre of the Mind. What makes radio drama so…
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Cheering on Artistic Creation
May 31, 2024As summer bursts into life, the Fund’s season also blooms with new artistic creations. Let’s cheer these artists on as they take big artistic leaps. Let’s be fans of each other and show up ready for delight and a challenge. Let's find our summer art crushes and fall into sweet summer…
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Sustaining artistic risk
March 18, 2024The Creation Fund’s tag line is We fund risk. Artistic creation is inherently risky, conjuring creative and logistical ingredients together in entirely new ways, all driven by the question “What if...?” One of the beautiful/infuriating truths about artistic creation is that there is no…
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Championing Francophone creativity
March 14, 2024In recent months, the National Creation Fund, fuelled by donors, has played a pivotal role in amplifying the voices of Quebec artists and propelling their creative endeavors to new heights. Projet Polytechnique Since November, the documentary theatre company Porte Parole has been touring…
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Investing in creativity and new beginnings
February 8, 2024Is there such a thing as a true beginning? Whether we’re talking about the start of a year, a new creation, or – in my case – a job, the word beginning can feel not quite right. For example, does creation begin with the spark of an idea, the first time you describe a concept to someone…
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Orienting ourselves in the dark
November 30, 2023And suddenly, it is the end of November. For those of us in the Northern hemisphere, this means a time of shorter days and expanding nights. Here in Ottawa, brief sunrises accompany rumours of snow and the kind of cold that clears your mind. As we ease into darkness, I simultaneously…
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A story that one learns over a lifetime: Mahabharata
November 6, 2023Your generous support of the NAC’s National Creation Fund recently helped a new production make waves across the pond. After having its world premiere at the Shaw Festival in March 2023, Mahabharata, written and adapted by Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes of Why Not Theatre, had its…
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Wild visions for a new season
October 11, 2023New season, new Sarah! In truth, I am not so new… I started as Artistic Associate the day the NCF was born, arriving during a time of big dreams and big questions. The process of bringing the Fund to life was itself pure creation – feeling our way through the unknown, experiencing moments…
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SGS bids farewell to the Fund
September 11, 2023Summer times are different than before. They are now a mixture of devastation and joy. They are far more dramatic than they used to be. We are changed by this. Yet, as we head back into the proverbial school year, the time when everything starts churning at full tilt, when we pass through…
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Materials for Creation: Leaving a trace of the ephemeral arts
June 15, 2023“Creating something beautiful to celebrate the first five years of the National Creation Fund”: that’s what Sarah Garton Stanley (SGS) and Sarah Conn, co-editors of the book Materials for Creation, had in mind a year ago. Launched this month in Montréal and Toronto, the book is also a…
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Big Stories – Oh Canada
March 31, 2023Thanks in no small part to Jully Black’s recent performance at an NBA all-star game, it has come to more general attention that “O Canada our home on native land” is another possible scan for the national anthem’s original wording of “our home and native land”. In recent weeks, in my role…
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One last dance for Cathy Levy. Looking back at 23 years at...
March 31, 2023Cathy Levy joined the NAC Dance team in 2000 with great enthusiasm. She set out to accomplish several things, including how to make Ottawa a prime destination for dance. Cathy, who had long been regarded as a visionary in the dance world, rose to the challenge with flying colours. In her…
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To The Moon and Back with Sarah Garton Stanley and the National...
March 27, 2023In July 2022, Sarah Garton Stanley (SGS) joined the NAC’s National Creation Fund as its new Artistic Producer. As an award-winning theatre maker, a change maker and a highly sought-after director and dramaturg, SGS seeks to forge connections between the performing arts and the questions of…
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Workshopping the Movement of Fall On Your Knees
January 13, 2023National Arts Centre English Theatre, Vita Brevis Arts, Canadian Stage, Neptune Theatre and Grand Theatre are preparing for unprecedented partnership that will bring the world premiere stage adaptation of the Canadian classic Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald to four cities –…
