Bernardine Stapleton

Playwright

Bernardine (Berni) Stapleton is a Newfoundland and Labrador Writer and Performer of unique distinction. Her play The Pope and Princess Di was just listed on the Playwrights Guild of Canada Sure Fire List of top 23 plays from female playwrights in Canada. She is the recipient of the 2018 Arts and Letters Best Dramatic Script Award for her one-woman play Dolly. She is the recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write her book for young Selkies and other creatures called Girly Muckle and the Queer Hands, due to be published next year. She is one of the featured performers in the acclaimed Artistic Fraud production of Between Breaths.

She was recently nominated for Arts NL Artist of the Year. She also launched a blog series championing body image acceptance and produced a one-woman show of her own called A Broad’s Perspective in which fairy tale tropes were dismantled and rewritten to reflect a more accurate viewpoint.

She is a recipient of The Rhonda Payne Award from Arts NL. She is a past recipient of the WANL Award for Best Work in Non-Fiction for her contribution to the book They Let Down Baskets. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Riddle Fence and The Newfoundland Quarterly. She is a recipient of the Ambassador of Tourism Award from Hospitality NL. Berni was the Artistic Director of the Grand Bank Regional Theatre Festival for 11 years.

She has been a Playwright-in-Residence with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal, Alberta Theatre Projects, CanStage, PARC, and other national companies. Her plays are regularly produced nationally and internationally. They include Offensive to Some, Brazil Square, and Our Frances. Berni’s other books include This is the Cat, Rants, Riffs and Roars, and her memoir Love, Life will be published next year.

Berni was the originating Director and Dramaturge for, and helped devise, transVersing with For the Love of Learning, and Artistic Fraud. Find out more by checking out www.bernistapleton.com.