Two Planks and a Passion Theatre receives the 2025 PACT Green Award

May 24, 2025

Toronto, Ontario. (May 24, 2025) – Each year, the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) gathers in a chosen Canadian city for their annual conference, known as PACTcon. This annual gathering is an opportunity to share vital experiences and build genuine connections with your theatre colleagues from across Canada. The conversations started at the event carry through the rest of the year and often spark creative partnerships, mentorships, and joint projects.

This year, PACTcon comes to Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, and it is a happy coincidence that Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company were selected to receive the 2025 Green Award for their recent project, ACTS OF RESILIENCE.

The 2025 PACT Green Award - An initiative of the Environmental Stewardship Committee, the PACT Green Award honours projects that inspires the theatre community to engage with the climate crisis and environmental stewardship in creative and exciting ways. The Green Award seeks to recognize projects that inspire passion and commitment towards climate action and environmental stewardship, and sustainably impact the practice of artists, organizations, and communities.

"The PACT Environmental Stewardship Committee was so inspired by all of the applications we received for the Green Award this year. Each application involved projects that were innovative, creative and impactful. This year's winner was indeed a particularly special project created by a rural outdoor theatre company impacted directly by climate change, who chose to face these challenges head on instead of sitting and waiting for something to happen. The Acts of Resilience urgently brought groups of people from all over Canada together to discuss, learn and ask hard questions including "what can we do to sustain our activities and how will we have to alter what we do to keep our art and our planet alive?". Focused on resilience instead of fear, and creative action instead of stagnation and despair, we are certain that the conversations and explorations created at this first-time conference will have a lasting effect on the live theatre industry," says Laura Caswell, Chair of the PACT Environmental Stewardship Committee.

ACTS OF RESILIENCE was a hybrid conference bringing together organizations and artists dedicated to outdoor performance to share knowledge and develop new strategies related to the climate crisis. The conference included sessions ranging from the practical (how are our conditions of work changing and how must we adapt?) to the high-level (how are our relationships with audiences changing and what are our responsibilities as storytellers in mitigating the crisis?). This three-day gathering was held at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in rural Nova Scotia between November 24 and 26, 2023.  Sessions were in-person only for some sessions, while others were virtual and connected artists internationally. Over 100 delegates attended, the majority in-person, along with many special guests and workshop leaders.

"Acts of Resilience had a significant impact because of the contributions of everyone who participated. It was, by design, about people. It reinforced, for me, the deep importance of coming together to confront the challenges we face. Too often, leaders in the arts and culture sector suffer through crises silently, largely out of fear that discussing vulnerability will result in negative impacts for their organization and /or practice. This gathering allowed participants to forge new relationships and confront the climate crisis in the context of the multiple, intersecting challenges we are all experiencing. The legacy of this gathering is something we continue to build on," says Ken Schwartz, Two Planks and a Passion Artistic Director.

Currently in its 34th season, Two Planks and a Passion Theatre’s mission is to commission, develop and produce challenging Canadian drama, as well as innovative interpretations and adaptations of historical works that have a specific relevance to our rural community. Two Planks and a Passion refers to the central vision of the company - the intentional embrace of simple, restrictive design and staging in pursuit of innovation and intimate engagement. Committed to theatre that reflects and provokes their audiences, they disseminate this work primarily through site-specific outdoor productions performed without the use of electricity at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, where they have been a resident company since 2005.

The remote, rural context influences everything done at Two Planks. The Farm where they develop and present their work, located in the Sipekni'Katik district of Mi’kma’ki (also known as the Annapolis Valley) is 4 kilometers from the nearest paved road. In examining the plays which they decide to create, the venues in which they perform and the ways in which they work, every step of their process is influenced by their isolation, their intimate connection to the land and our (changing) climate. 

2025 PACT Green Award Runners Up: Onishka Productions

We also congratulate runner up candidate for the 2025 PACT Green Award: Onishka Productions. Onishka Productions is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary arts organisation that creates bridges between Indigenous peoples worldwide while honoring their diversity, richness and resistance. Onishka Productions creates and presents performance-based productions and collaborations. ONISHKA means ‘wake up!’ in Anishinaabemowin. In this spirit, Onishka Productions believe that Indigenous cosmologies provide pathways towards sustainable communities. Through artistic expression, we can challenge and transform the world we live in. This summer, Onishka brings Nigamon/Tunai to the Luminato Festival in Toronto, June 5, 6, and 7, 2025.

Émilie Monnet, from Turtle Island, and Waira Nina, from the Colombian Amazon, are interdisciplinary artists who seek to forge links between Indigenous people of the northern and southern hemispheres. They invite you into a mesmerising performance inspired by solidarity for the protection of water and resistance against extraction of resources. In the Colombian Amazon, on the territory of the Inga people, oil and mining companies destroy entire living environments to plunder resources. This includes copper, which is central to Anishinaabe culture in Canada, where these same companies thrive. The words Nigamon and Tunai mean ‘song’ in the artists’ respective languages. In Nigamon/Tunai, Monnet and Nina experiment with their voices, their breath and their bodies to interweave a performed ritual with audio documentary. Together, the artists create a multi-sensory experience, immersing the audience in the traditional knowledge of their cultures and the struggles that bind them together.

About PACT 

PACT is the collective voice of professional Canadian theatres, a leader in the performing arts community, and a devoted advocate of the value of live performance. PACT represents over 170 professional English-speaking theatre companies operating in communities across the country, ranging from the largest performing arts organizations in Canada, to smaller theatre companies that serve their audiences in a wide variety of communities; from rural to urban, commercial to independent, theatre for young audiences, culturally specific companies, and everything else in between.

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Media Contact:

Ainslee Jessiman

Membership & Communications Manager, PACT

ainsleej@pact.ca

416-595-6455 ext. 1519

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