About

DualMinds is the creative team of Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn. They are dedicated to the creation and performance of new works for the theatre and screen. Based in Canada, one of their main goals is to share their creations with a global audience making cultural, political, and social differences seem less extreme.

Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn met while at the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program. Upon graduation they co-wrote and performed their own play Tuesdays & Sundays at Theatre Network’s NextFest. The play was greeted with standing ovations at every performance, and received three Edmonton Sterling Awards: Outstanding Actor, Actress, and New Work. DualMinds was born.

Their production of Tuesdays & Sundays has since been presented across Canada at theatres including the National Arts Centre and Vertigo Theatre, and internationally at the Edinburgh Festival, Prague, New Mexico, and New York. It was listed as a TOP TEN PLAY OF THE YEAR in Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver, and in the New York Sun’s BEST OF 2006. It was published by NeWest Press and again by Dramatic Publishing, was broadcast as a radio play by CBC and BBC, and the movie rights have been optioned by Clare Hodge (Love and Other Dilemmas) and UK’s Slate Films (The Last King of Scotland).

During this time, Arnold and Hahn wrote a short play, Clear Sunny Day (commissioned/premiered Catalyst Theatre) and made the short film The Janitors (Zed Drama Prize), co-written/directed by Daniel Arnold and Matthew Kowalchuck, starring Medina Hahn and William B. Davis.

Most recently, DualMinds has developed, produced, and began to tour their new full length play Any Night, which won Outstanding New Play at Toronto’s Summerworks Festival, five Toronto NOW Magazine Awards including Outstanding Production, and mention among their Top Plays of the Year. Any Night will be published by Playwrights Canada Press and has also been optioned as a movie by Ameland Films (Ill Fated, See Grace Fly, Moving Malcolm).

Beyond DualMinds, Arnold and Hahn continue to work as actors and writers (see resumés). Together, they were twice-nominated for the Edmonton Mayor’s Award for Emerging Artists of the Year, are recipients of Alberta Theatre Projects’ Emerging Artist Scholarship, and mentored with Daniel MacIvor and da da kamera for three years. In 2008, Daniel MacIvor named Arnold and Hahn as the protégé winners of Canada’s most prestigious theatre award: The Siminovitch Prize.

Daniel and Medina photographed by Trevor Jansen