[Thursday, June 5th]
Theme: Storytelling, music and folklore
Bernardine Stapleton is a playwright, author, skit-artist, and actor. She was born in North West River, Labrador and grew up on the south coast of Newfoundland.
She is one of our Newfoundland and Labrador’s most prominent theatre artists and cultural leaders. She has spent her career making beautiful theatre in unexpected places. She is a Siminovitch Playwright Prize finalist, as well as being the recipient of the Rhonda Payne Award for Theatre. She is the Artistic Director of Girl Power Inc. an indie feminist theatre company devoted to championing the unique landscape of NL, and to advocating queer and gender equity.
She is the inaugural playwright-in-residence with RCAT, embarking on a year-long journey of creation for a new play on aging and dying in the professional arts: Senior Moments: Don’t Wait Until We’re Dead. She has had almost forty plays professionally produced in Canada and beyond, including Ireland, the U.K. and New York. Her plays include Offensive to Some and The Antidote for Life: Memory, Madness and Beagles, an autobiographical exploration of madness in the arts. New works in progress include an audio play for the NAC English Theatre’s Irresistible Neighbourhoods: Walking on Water, a feminist queer imagining Ophelia Saves the World from Zombies and the upcoming podcast The Haunted Doorbell.
Bernardine was writer-in-residence at Memorial University in 2019 and has taught an Introduction to Playwrighting course there. Her books include Love, Life, with Breakwater Books and the newest yet unpublished Brazil Square about the once iconic boarding house district of St. John’s, and the writing guide How to Write a Play and Have Fun Without Hardly Even Trying or How to Finish Your Best Worst First Draft or Prepare to Throw the Pasta. She lives in St. John’s with rescue beagle Georgie Girl.
Workshop
Advanced Communicators Day
Visit the Advanced Communicators Day page to learn more about Bernie’s workshop.