2b theatre company, stylized as the 2b theatre company, is a theatre company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2b was founded in 1999 by Christian Barry, Anthony Black, Andrea Dymond, Zach Fraser, and Angela Gasparetto. Built from a fledgling student start up, the company has gone on to stage 29 original productions, including 26 world premieres. Its work has been presented in 66 cities, 13 countries, and five continents. 2b has won two Herald Angel Awards, an Edinburgh Fringe First, and has been nominated for six Drama Desk Awards. 2b’s shows have been finalists for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award three times and in 2018, Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story became the first theatrical production to win the award.
"2b theatre company strives to stimulate the mind and awaken the spirit by producing theatre that is innovative and challenging. We create, produce, present, and tour original work nationally and internationally. Our work is part of the evolution of contemporary theatre aesthetics. We are also an incubator, central to a thriving national theatre community, that offers a range of creation, performance, and production opportunities for arts professionals from our region and beyond."
While based in Halifax, 2b is a touring company. To date, 2b has toured to 40 cities in 10 countries on four continents.
List of cities visited by 2b: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Year | Award | Status | Production |
---|---|---|---|
2015 | The Coast Top Ten [7] | What A Young Wife Ought To Know | |
2014 | Herald Little Devil Award [8] | Winner | The God That Comes |
The Nova Scotia Merritt Award: Best New Play [9] | Winner | The God That Comes | |
2013 | Nova Scotia Masterworks Award [10] | Finalist | When it Rains |
Betty Mitchell Awards: Outstanding Composition or Sound Design [11] | Winner | The God That Comes | |
Betty Mitchell Awards: Best Production of a Musical [11] | Winner | The God That Comes | |
2012 | Summerworks Design Award | Winner | When it Rains |
The Nova Scotia Merritt Award: Best Supporting Female Actor [9] | Winner | When it Rains | |
The Nova Scotia Merritt Award: Best Director [9] | Winner |
Nova Scotia is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Canada's contemporary theatre reflects a rich diversity of regional and cultural identities. Since the late 1960s, there has been a concerted effort to develop the voice of the 'Canadian playwright', which is reflected in the nationally focused programming of many of the country's theatres. Within this 'Canadian voice' are a plurality of perspectives - that of the First Nations, new immigrants, French Canadians, sexual minorities, etc. - and a multitude of theatre companies have been created to specifically service and support these voices.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2018 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows in 322 venues. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the World Cup in terms of global ticketed events.
Fringe theatre is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In London, the fringe are small-scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York's Off-Off-Broadway theatres and Europe's "free theatre" groups.
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Daniel MacIvor is a Canadian actor, playwright, theatre director, and film director. He is probably best known for his acting roles in independent films and the sitcom Twitch City.
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The Robert Merritt Awards, commonly known as The Merritt Awards, were started in 2002 and are administered by Theatre Nova Scotia. The Merritts honour excellence in theatre throughout the province of Nova Scotia. They are named for Robert Merritt, who was well known to the Halifax community both as a teacher of playwriting in the Theatre Department at Dalhousie University, and as the film critic for CBC's Information Morning.
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