Siminovitch winner Ravi Jain on making meaning — and theatre — out of anger

TORONTO — The first three times Ravi Jain was up for Canada’s top theatre prize, the finalists found out who won ahead of the ceremony.

This year, that changed, leaving the founder of Toronto’s Why Not Theatre in suspense much of Monday in the lead-up to the event where the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize would be handed out.

“Yesterday was a really intensely anxious day,” Jain said by video call on Tuesday morning.

“I was just trying to keep everything measured. So win or lose was sort of just medium. And then I got home and I was like, Whoa, what just happened?”

Jain founded Why Not Theatre in 2007. He had just returned to Toronto, his hometown, after completing his MFA at École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Before that, he studied at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts.

Still, despite his talent and pedigree, he couldn’t get an audition in the city where he grew up.

That experience sparked an anger in him, Jain said in his acceptance speech on Monday night.

“Anger was the fire, a necessary fuel for me to make space for my artistic voice — because from day one here in Canada, I had to fight for space and prove my worth,” he said.

The Siminovitch jury praised the work forged by that anger as trailblazing, transforming the Canadian theatre landscape.

His credits include “Prince Hamlet,” a gender-bending bilingual ASL/English reimagining of Shakespeare, in which Horatio is the narrator and is portrayed by a deaf actor.

More recently, he co-created the two-part “Mahabharata,” a stage interpretation of a 4,000-year-old Sanskrit epic that tells the story of two branches of a family at war. The play toured the world, including productions at the Barbican in London and the Perth Festival in Australia.

“A funny thing happened in the 10 years of creating and touring this work,” Jain said in his speech.

He sat with the audiences all over the world “to hear its message, which has been passed down by my ancestors for thousands of years,” he said. “To this story about war — and about anger, greed, and revenge. And its message is peace.”

And so, he’s been meditating on peace.

“Anger can be all consuming, so it really penetrated my life,” he said on Tuesday morning.

“Not having the distance to control it or keep it at bay becomes a kind of overpowering energy that is not dissimilar from the energy I’m mad at.”

The Siminovitch win came at the right time, he said.

He was first shortlisted in 2016, then again in 2019 and 2022.

“Ten years, it shifted something. Ten years ago I never would have imagined to feel what I feel right now. Just age and experience change you,” he said.

Now, he said, the money and prestige that come with the Siminovitch means he can relax a little.

“One thought I had was maybe I could just slow down and not feel I have to prove myself anymore,” Jain said. “That was part of the chip (on my shoulder) with the anger.”

In the past, Jain said, Why Not Theatre has hustled non-stop.

“We fire so many ideas around the table and we act on all of them,” he said. “Sort of like you jump first and then figure it out later.”

Now, he’s ready to figure it out before jumping — starting immediately.

“I’m gonna take the day off just to kind of let it process and sink in,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 2, 2025.