The Isle aux Morts Theatre Festival (formerly known as Granite Coast Theatre Festival) has just announced an exciting line up for its 2017 summer season, which runs from June 28th to July 30th.

The Festival is held at Hairyman’s Safe Haven Café in Isle aux Morts, a small community on Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast, located about 16km from the Port aux Basque ferry terminal. This year’s Festival will be bookended by performances from local comedians Da Koodens’, whose audiences get to enjoy a traditional Newfoundland dinner during the show.

Other performances include a unique, multi-media production of a new play called A Fish Tale: A Puppet Latern Play. The play is a co-production by the Qalipu First Nation and the Isle aux Morts Festival, and tells the origins of our province’s fishery and imagines what its future might look like.

The production uses large glowing puppets, live action, and dance as well as an original soundtrack and soundscape (featuring the voices of Greg Malone and Darryl Power) to tell the story of a young woman who travels through time searching for her marine biologist father. During her travels she falls in love with a young Mi’kmaq man who joins her on her journey.

Another highlight of this year’s Festival is an adapted version of playwright Jamie Skidmore’s The Song of the Mermaid. The play re-tells the story of teenage Ann Harvey who rescued 163 people from a shipwreck off the coast of Isle aux Morts in 1828.

The play revolves around a love-triangle that implodes inside the ship as it approaches the shores of Newfoundland. This year’s production will be directed by Kevin Woolridge and will feature a brand new ending to this classic piece of Newfoundland theatre.

There will also be a one night-only performance All The Birds in their Bird Houses, written and performed by Kevin Woolridge and directed by Berni Stapleton. The play weaves together the stories of three protagonists, all of whom are struggling to re-define what the word  ‘home’ means to them. The production will come to Isle aux Morts after wrapping shows in Toronto and St. John’s.

This year’s Festival also features some exciting kids’ programming including a production of Jamie Skidmore’s Cod Love, a comedy that draws on traditional folktales to tell the story of a girl who falls in love with a codfish.

The Festival is offering theatre camps for youth between the age of 10 and 17, who live in the Granite Coast area. This initiative will help grow a new generation of theatre lovers and producers on the Granite Coast, who’ll keep this vibrant Festival going in years to come.

For the full Isle aux Morts Festival schedule and information about tickets check out their website.