12 days, 16 plays!

The Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival ​- a major celebration of artistry in Newfoundland and Labrador - 12 days, 16 plays - all happening at the First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity in St. John’s from September 17-28, 2024. This project is supported by the Creative Projects Fund administered by Celebrate NL as part of their Year of the Arts program.

Designed to uplift and empower both emerging and established playwrights and producers and directors and actors and designers….the Year of the Arts Women's Play Festival will be an unprecedented gathering and sharing of theatre talent from across Ktaqmkuk and the Big Land!

Pick up your free Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival passport and get a stamp for every night you attend!

Tickets are just $12 per night or grab an all-access pass for $100 - plus HST and processing fees.
Our location will be the First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity, located at 81 Cochrane Street, St. John's

On-street parking is available throughout the neighbourhood. For blue-zone pass holders, there is one accessible parking space on the ramp that leads up to the front doors. The floor seating is all one level with a gentle downward slope leading to the front of the space, and there is one row with extra leg room designated as "accessible seating" because it has more room for placement of mobility aids. 

All seating is wood pews - please feel free to bring along a cushion for your comfort.
The Year of the Arts Women's Play Festival is also supported by:
St. John’s is home to a rich, diverse, and vibrant urban Indigenous community. Located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Beothuk, the lands and waters in and around the City have traditionally served as a gathering place for the Mi’kmaq. The broader region of Newfoundland and Labrador continues to be home to diverse Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. We honour and pay respect to the past, present, and future caretakers of these territories.

We also must acknowledge, as we gather together this historic evening, the labour theft extracted from people of African descent, used to build European wealth and economies globally, and in the Canadian nation state, including Newfoundland and Labrador’s shipbuilding and cod fishery industries, through the violence of trans-Atlantic enslavement.

We thank both First Light and the office of the Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism at Memorial University for crafting and sharing these words that provide us with important perspectives.

As Armine Nutting Gosling herself reflected, “No class, or race, or sex can have its interests attended to...​unless it is represented by direct suffrage,” and in doing so she appropriately recognized the overlap of multiple forms of discrimination.