About Theatre Newfoundland Labrador

Theatre Newfoundland Labrador is a professional theatre company dedicated to the creation and development of new plays for and about the people of  Newfoundland and Labrador. We also produce and present plays from the national and international repertoire that speak to the place in which we live.

The Gros Morne Theatre Festival is a major Canadian Theatre Festival based in Cow Head, at the north boundary of the Gros Morne National Park. A 14-16 week summer repertory season that includes 4-6 plays along with a visiting artist series and a workshop development week. We employ approx 40 staff annually including actors, technicians, designers, directors, box office and kitchen staff. There are two performances nightly in our new facility, The Nurse Myra Bennett Centre for the Performing Arts.

Our line up continues to support touring when possible – favourites like Tempting Providence by Robert Chafe and SaraH McDonald’s With Cruel Times In Between. Our plays have toured regionally, provincially, nationally and internationally. We have performed at Atlantic Scene Festival in Ottawa, On the Waterfront Festival in Halifax, Magnetic North in Edmonton, Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, Ten Days on the Island Festival in Tasmania, The PuSh International Festival in Vancouver, and the California International Theatre Festival. In 2019 we completed a UK tour of Bernadine Stapleton’s Our Frances following a rural community tour of Newfoundland and Labrador the year previous.

We are a ‘non-profit’ charitable organization dependent on governments, industry and individual sponsors and patrons in order to subsidize our tickets for you, our audience – please consider a donation! And most importantly – see one of our plays!

Our Mission

Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador (TNL) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and producing professional theatre which reflects the lives and diversity of our audiences on the provinces’s west coast, extending to Labrador and across the island of Newfoundland.

Through the Gros Morne Theatre Festival, youth theatre programming, main stage, courses in threatre instruction, and by touring productions to outport communities, TNL seeks to provide Newfoundlanders with thought-provoking and relevant entertainment, with an emphasis on regional and Canadian work.

Our Mandate

To promote Theatre Newfoundland Labrador as a leading cultural voice for its communities, and to develop and maintain a growing arts community and audience on the west coast of Newfoundland & Labrador.

Our Objectives

TNL actively promotes the development of theatre artists and the growth of a strong regional arts community by fostering emerging artists at the Gros Morne Theatre Festival.

TNL reaches out to its community, by providing programmes in theatre instruction, the Gros Morne Theatre Festival, and by touring mainstage productions. In so doing we aspire to enrich the cultural life of our community and to inspire new audiences to a life-long love affair with the theatre.

Our programming must reflect an awareness of Canadian and world theatre as well as our own, in order to bring the world to the west coast of Newfoundland & Labrador and at the same time help our audiences to see themselves.

Our Artistic Vision

TNL seeks to forge an alchemy of traditional theatre rendered in fresh and innovative ways, and alternative theatre produced in ways which provide access and engagement for our audiences. We are committed to finding and helping to develop emerging artists in western Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Atlantic provinces and in Canada.

As a grassroots organization heavily involved with our communities, TNL must be as concerned with the process of developing a theatre audience and a community of artists, as with production. That means we must remain devoted to audience development and young artists and provide both with artistic leadership and a stable and creative professional context in which to develop.