Theatre Antigonish Named 2025 Recipient of Prestigious StFX Community Partner Recognition Award

St. Francis Xavier University has named Theatre Antigonish the 2025
recipient of the Community Partner Recognition Award, a distinction given to outstanding local, regional, national, and international partners that support StFX’s academic mission. Theatre Antigonish was selected from among the many organizations StFX collaborates with across Nova Scotia, Canada, and abroad, recognizing the theatre as one of the university’s most significant and enduring community partners.

Previous recipients of the Community Partner Recognition Award have included organizations such as L’Arche Antigonish, the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre & Sexual Assault Services Association, the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists, and international partners Nexos Comunitarios (Peru) and Venceremos Development Consult (Ghana)—demonstrating the award’s broad scope and the national and global scale of StFX’s community partnerships.

The award was presented at Fall Convocation on December 6, 2025, where Artistic Director Andrea Boyd on behalf of Theatre Antigonish received a framed certificate and a $2,000 cash award in recognition of its outstanding contributions to the StFX community.

50-Year Creative and Educational Partnership
Founded in 1974, Theatre Antigonish has made the Bauer Theatre on the StFX campus a home for community and student theatre for half a century. Festival Antigonish, founded in 1988, has added a professional summer company that deepens this campus–community ecosystem.

Together, the two companies have created a sustained partnership that benefits students and faculty across disciplines and across generations.
In the 2024–25 academic year, Theatre Antigonish and Festival Antigonish engaged over 1000 student and youth participants, including 600+ StFX students, as well as StFX faculty and alumni through artistic mentorship, engagement, curriculum delivery, and academic collaboration. As part of Theatre Antigonish’s 50th Anniversary, over 200 student tickets were offered at just $5, reflecting a strong commitment to equitable access and affordability.

Separately from these student and youth engagement activities, Theatre Antigonish welcomes between 3,000 and 4,000 audience members each year, and combined with Festival Antigonish, approximately 9,000 audience seats are filled annually at the Bauer Theatre.

Long-time audience member and Senior Research Professor Barry Taylor notes that Theatre Antigonish “uses the stage to tell varied, interesting stories that provoke thought and discussion,” helping young people “negotiate a complicated world” while maintaining “uniformly high quality” productions that engage students on stage and behind the scenes.
This recognition comes at a particularly important moment for Theatre Antigonish and Festival Antigonish, as they work together on the Bridge the Bauer campaign—a major effort to retrofit and upgrade the Bauer Theatre so that this kind of educational, artistic, and community impact can continue safely for years to come.

• Impact on Student Learning, Research, and Community Engagement
  Theatre Antigonish and Festival Antigonish work closely with StFX faculty and staff to advance the university’s teaching, research, and community engagement mission through:

  Teaching & Learning – Faculty regularly bring classes to productions, build assignments around plays, and invite theatre artists into the classroom. Theatre Antigonish and FAST support in-class performances, one-act play festivals, and guest talks by playwrights and performers, helping students sharpen critical thinking, communication, and creative skills.

• Research & Creative Activity – The companies have been key community partners on successful research grants, including CLARI (Change Lab Research in Action), MITACS, SSHRC Connection, SSHRC Insight Development, and SSHRC Insight awards over the past five years. These projects have supported student research assistantships, generated publications, and introduced students to archival and community-based research at the Bauer Theatre.

• Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA) – Productions and related programming have tackled topics such as refugee experiences, Indigenous storytelling, homophobia, gender and sexuality, sexual violence, and religious and cultural identity. The theatres’ collaborations with the 2SLGBTQIA+ Student Inclusion Office and X-Pride Student Society—through shows like The Outside Inn, Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B, annual Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings, Pride events, and co-created projects like A Trans Tale – The First Jew in Canada—have created inclusive, identity-affirming cultural spaces on campus. As Aimee MacDonald, Manager of Human Rights & Equity and 2SLGBTQIA+ Student Inclusion, writes, this support “is not incidental or ‘one-off’, it is sustained, intentional, and continues to grow… Their contributions are, and continue to be, meaningful, collaborative, and transformative.”

• Student Success and Belonging – Students describe Theatre Antigonish as a place where they find both artistic challenge and a sense of home. “I cannot overstate the positive impact that this organization has had on my university experience,” writes graduating student Abby Fraser. “I can say without a doubt that my time at Festival Antigonish & Theatre Antigonish has been the best part of my StFX experience.”

• Impact on students’ learning, personal, and professional growth;
• Contributions to research, creative activity, and professional development;
• Role in fostering community engagement for students, faculty, and staff;
• Enduring benefit to the university community and clear potential for ongoing collaboration.