Artistic Producer

Donna Spencer
Artistic Producer
dspencer@firehallartscentre.ca

Donna Spencer is the Artistic Producer of the Firehall Arts Centre and was one of the Firehall’s founding directors. She is the winner of the Jessie Richardson Outstanding Direction Award for Urinetown, the Musical and for Reading Hebron. Her many theatre directorial credits include Mary’s Wedding, Yellow Fever, REFUGE, Social Studies, Vimy, Stuff Happens, Einstein’s Gift, Golden Child, Menopositive The Musical!, The Yoko Ono Project, Wawatay, The Unnatural and Accidental Women, Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe and many others.

Spencer has collaboratively created three plays – Walking the Tightrope, Mainstream and Opening Doors, as well as writing the contemporary adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

She is also the recipient of a Jessie Richardson Award for Multicultural Innovation in the Theatre and the Jessie Richardson Career Achievement Award. She was awarded the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for Theatre in 2012 and recognized by the BC Achievement Foundation for her theatre and dance works. She is a member of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame, and in 2022 received the Lieutenant Governor’s Platinum Jubilee Award in Arts and Music.

In addition, Spencer is also the Producer of the annual Dancing on the Edge Festival of Contemporary Dance, which celebrates its 35th festival in July 2023.

I want to create a Canadian company that really reflects the Canadian people.
— Donna Spencer, Artistic Producer
Our Place in the World
“When I moved to Vancouver in 1990, The Firehall really represented to me the only place where people of ethnic minorities could have their work taken seriously.”
Hiro Kanagawa
Playwright, Stage and Screen Actor

We’re Grateful to Be Here.

The Firehall Arts Centre is located on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations where they lived and gathered together for thousands of years. Acknowledging their connections to these lands is a significant part of what the Firehall considers when choosing the productions and presentations we undertake and how that work shapes and impacts those around us. We ask our community to reflect on what being present here means to you and those around you.