(playwright: The Final Inquiry; director: Taken Before Birth; script dramaturg: Flag, You Said We’d Be Together Forever, Taken Before Birth)
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard aka Belladonna the Blest is an emcee, playwright and agitator. 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, and The First Stone. Commissioned works include Witness Shift (Obsidian Theatre, 21 Black Futures), Reaching For Starlight (Geordie Theatre), Say the Words (Wrecking Ball), The House You Build (SNTC). Opera libretti include Forbidden (Afarin Mansouri/Tapestry Opera) and Oubliette (Ivan Barbotin/Tapestry Opera). DM has collaborated on the creation of Hope Is A Story with Sunny Drake, They Say He Fell with Nir Bareket and 501: Toronto in Transit with Justin Manyfingers and Bob Naismith. She is co-editor with Yvette Nolan of the Playwrights Canada Press anthologies Refractions: Solo and Refractions: Scenes, as well as editor of Indian Act: Residential School Plays. DM is currently the emcee in residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, associate artist at lemonTree Creations, artistic director of New Harlem Productions, coordinator of the AD HOC Assembly, and of Nightwood Theatre’s Write From the Hip play development program.