Cultural Festivals

A blend of visual art, music, fashion, dance and more, the StArt Festival is a two-day blitz of creativity, held at The Bus Stop Theatre. Aimed at uplifting and amplifying both emerging and marginalized artists, the event is always a trove of on-the-come-up greatness mixed with names you’ve been meaning to check out. What is the […]

Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Lesley Choice, publisher of Pottersfield Press, as ‘she’ instead of ‘he’. The Coast regrets the error. On June 9, the red carpet unfurled at Halifax Central Library’s Paul O’Regan Hall, as the first Atlantic Book Awards ceremony since 2019 took place. Past winners—like former Halifax poet […]

The city has changed its approach to how it’ll celebrate July 1 this year: In today’s announcement from HRM sharing info on the programming planned for 155th anniversary of the confederation, it stated that consultation with “the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre and local Indigenous artists” was part of the 2022 planning process, aiming for “a […]

The annual Stages Theatre Festival shows new works of theatre at all phases of creation: From table readings to full-on performances, this is the place to witness how the three-act structure gets made (and how it gets subverted). Run by Eastern Front Theatre (and housed in EFT’s home base, the Alderney Landing Theatre) the festival […]

It’s a not-well-enough known statistic that two-thirds of Canadians know a woman who has been abused physically, emotionally or sexually—but it’s a fact that’s been seared on the brain of director Tara Thorne. A former Coast staffer (we shared a double-wide desk in the summer of 2016), Thorne’s simmering, provocative debut feature—titled Compulsus—stems from this figure, […]

The biggest regional celebration of reading, the Atlantic Book Awards & Festival combines panel discussions, story circles and its marquee event—an annual awards gala—to deliver a bookworm’s dream every spring. As the yearly event returns, it’s embracing a hybrid online and in-person model that’s sure to sharpen up your reading list, stat. What is the […]

The artsy, out-there (yet accessible) EVERYSEEKER Festival is the type of event that challenges and feeds you, bringing together some of the most boundary-pushing artists from Halifax and the world to help you unleash your inner weirdo and make you feel something. What is the official name? EVERYSEEKER. What is it also known as? Some […]

Back with its first in-person slate since 2020, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival is ready to make cinephiles’s dreams come true from June 9-12. In a city under the heel of movie multiplexes, the annual event (run by the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative) always delivers a feast of art-house and DIY movies that critics are raving […]

When The Coast reaches Isaac Mulè, artistic director of Page 1 Theatre (the company behind the new-to-Halifax event called OutFest), he’s just stepped out of The Bus Stop Theatre, where the hubbub of the last minute is unfolding. “The directors are hanging some things for one of the pieces and the actors are running lines […]

Summer 2022 is already heating up to be a good time–and the sizzle factor has climbed even higher with today’s announcement that Halifax Jazz Festival is returning to a pre-pandemic format of live, in-person programming on the Halifax waterfront, at St. Matthew’s United Church and at The Carleton. The first wave of artists announced includes […]