HISTORY

Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn are two-time nominees for the Edmonton Mayor’s Award: Emerging Artists of the Year, are recipients of Alberta Theatre Projects’ Emerging Artist Scholarship, one of their mentors, Daniel MacIvor honoured them as protégé winners of Canada’s most prestigious theatre award, The Siminovitch Prize, and their screenplay Any Night received the CFF Super Channel Accelerator Award.

Arnold and 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 was then 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 were 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, which screened at VIFF, EIFF, CIFF, Whistler, interfilm Berlin, and the Hollywood Film Fest, was broadcast on CBC, Italian PayTV and is internationally distributed by interfilm.

Most recently, DualMinds 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, received three Vancouver Jessie nominations including Outstanding Director, and was mentioned among the Best Shows of the Year in Toronto and Vancouver. Any Night received its American premiere Off-Broadway in June 2011 for a limited run which received great critical acclaim. Any Night was published by Playwrights Canada Press, and Daniel and Medina have adapted it into a feature film, with support from Corus Entertainment and Creative BC, and the script winning the nation-wide CFF Super Channel Screenplay Award.

Beyond DualMinds, Arnold and Hahn continue to work as professional actors and writers (see resumés and demo reels).