“No one remembers why it started—
What the first stone was for—
And so no one can think of a reason to stop.”

Can something torn apart by war be put together again? From the award-winning author of Gas Girls and Sound of the Beast, Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s The First Stone is an epic-yet-intimate exploration of the harrowing path from violence to forgiveness. In an unnamed village in a country modelled after Uganda, two children are captured by an army and forced to commit unimaginable atrocities while their family longs for their return. Through poetry and song, this insightful drama sheds light on the exploitation of child abductees, the communities from which they are stolen, the determination to bring them home, and the hard road to reconciliation that follows.

Expansive in its scope, The First Stone is a profound parable that traces ancestral cycles of violence and the imperatives of transformative justice with staggering clarity. This merciful call for humanity follows one family’s struggle to reunite, measuring the cost of holding on and the grace of letting go.

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.

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard's profile page

“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