Shealyn Varnes

Shealyn Varnes is an actor and creative administrator with her BFA in Theatre from MUN. Select theatre credits: Where You Are (Theatre Baddeck); Comedy of Errors (Highland Arts Theatre); Real Housewives of Cape Breton (Savoy Theatre); and Hamlet (Grenfell Theatre). Select film credits: Moonshine (CBC), Alaska Triangle (Ignite TV).

Sure Thing by David Ives

Artist Project

In this short, comedic play, “Sure Thing” by David Ives, we watch two strangers in a coffee shop stumble through an awkward social interaction as they get to know each other. Here’s the kicker: both characters can ring a bell if things are going south and their conversation resets. It’s pretty much foolproof dating. Or is it?

Performance Times: 7:30, 8:45, 10:00

Lumiere Arts Festival 2024 // The Art of Caring

Lumiere Arts Festival invites artists and community members to reflect on the concept of care.

In a polarized landscape, care can lap like a brook, or pound like large waves crashing ashore. To care is to tend, to root, to rebel, to share and to endure. This year, the festival is encouraging artists to submit works rooted in solidarity, with community building as resistance, that explores the need to care for ourselves, others, and the earth, both locally and globally. The Lumiere Arts Festival makes space for joy, contemporary art, and meaningful dialogue.

Land Acknowledgement

Lumière Arts Festival, on behalf of the board, the artists, and the communities we represent, acknowledges that we work, live and play in the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people, in Unama’ki Cape Breton, who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.

We are grateful not only for the strong and ongoing stewardship of these lands we call home, but also for the stories, music, and art that Mi’kmaq people continue to create and share, carrying ancestral voices, sacred teachings, and legacies of interconnectedness and resilience forward into the present and on to the future.

We aspire to reflect that sense of connection between past and present in our festival. We are inspired by L’nu artists to foster connection and self-reflection in our work. We will work to ensure that art is accessible, inclusive, and integrated into public spaces so that we can share our collective stories, recognizing the challenges of our past and imagining brighter futures.

We are all Treaty people.