Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, a.k.a. Belladonna the Blest, is an emcee, playwright, agitator, and practitioner of humanitarian arts. Her main body of work, the 54ology, includes Cake, Sound of the Beast, A Man A Fish, Salome’s Clothes, Gas Girls, Give It Up, The Smell of Horses, Bilguisa Speaks Up, Diggers, Conjugal, Hunt/Peck, and The First Stone. She is a contributor to The Only Good Indian (Jiv Parasram, Tom Arthur Davis/Pandemic Theatre), Forbidden (Afarin Mansouri/Tapestry Opera), and Oubliette (Ivan Barbotin/Tapestry Opera). Other theatre works include Reaching for Starlight, They Say He Fell, and The Final Inquiry. She is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of Refractions: Solo (2014) and Refractions: Scenes (2020) and editor of Indian Act: Residential School Plays (2018), all published with Playwrights Canada Press.

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“It was quite moving to go to the theatre and find an argument for forgiving even the most unforgivable.”

J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail

“The First Stone is a triumph . . . Yes, there is pain, yes, there is generational trauma—but there is also laughter. There’s hope . . . The First Stone traces the genesis of child warfare in Uganda—the abductions, the killings, the unhappy homecomings—but ultimately persists forward with a beating heart of grace.”

Aisling Murphy, Toronto Star

“In a subtle though deeply evocative theatrical flourish, the traumatic disruption of this community is given tactile form . . . The First Stone acknowledges our dark potential and honours our resilience.”

Istvan Dugalin, Istvan Reviews