Norman Armour Receives National Arts Centre Award
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PuSh Festival artistic and executive director Norman Armour.
Norman Armour, artistic and executive director of Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, has been awarded the 2015 National Arts Centre Award for Distinguished Contribution to Touring in the Performing Arts, it was announced November 25, 2015.
Armour is being recognized for his ongoing commitment to arts touring and presenting in Canada and abroad, and in particular his work to bring west coast artists and companies to international prominence. The award will be presented at the opening reception of the CAPACOA annual conference November 25 at the NAC Fourth Stage.
Armour is the co-founder of the PuSh Festival, as well Rumble Productions, an interdisciplinary theatre company that continues to be a mainstay Vancouver’s independent theatre scene.
“I am deeply honoured to receive this award,” said Armour. “Like anyone who sticks it out and endeavours to persevere in the performing arts, my efforts and passions have been as much about making a meaningful contribution to the milieu as it was about my own individual career and aspirations. To make anything possible, to make anything a reality in Vancouver, you often need to first create the actual conditions for it to happen. For the past 30 odd years of my professional career, I’d like to think that this has been my sole, and soul-defining, purpose and mission. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to my colleagues and peers at the National Arts Centre and CAPACOA for providing me with the inspiration and encouragement that we all so need to keep our spirits and minds going, day in and day out.”
Since graduating from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts in 1986, Armour has collaborated on over 120 works for the stage and other media. His career includes producer, director, actor and producer, covering a range of creative interests: devised works and new writing for the stage; contemporary and classical adaptations; site-specific endeavours; large-scale interdisciplinary events; dance/theatre collaborations; and live-remote radio broadcasts.
He can be seen on reruns of X Files, as well as films such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Capote.
Armour recently directed the premiere of Pauline, an opera by Tobin Stokes and Margaret Atwood on the life and art of Métis poet Pauline Johnson, for City Opera Vancouver.
