Keep the Peace
Be the Peace Institute & Woven Word StoryWorks
Coming this fall, 2026…
Be the Peace Institute is partnering with Woven Word StoryWorks to tour Keep the Peace, a new play by Stephanie Nickerson across Nova Scotia. After 3 very successful dramatic readings in December of 2025, it was clear that this story needs to be shared far and wide.
Keep the Peace is a darkly comedic drama that opens on Fran — a woman in her early sixties — standing over her husband’s body with no memory of how she got there. When her best friend Loreen arrives, the two are joined by an unlikely crew of women who decide that calling the police isn’t an option. What begins as a desperate cover-up becomes something else entirely: a story about friendship, survival, and the lengths women will go to protect one another from a world that hasn’t protected them.
Set against the backdrop of maritime Nova Scotia, the play meets a hard subject — intimate partner violence — with unexpected humour, sharp wit, and a fierce tenderness. It’s heavy and it’s funny, sometimes in the same breath, and it’s built to start the kinds of conversations that too often go unspoken.
More than a play
Each performance on the tour will be followed by a community talk-back, bringing local audiences together with the people who do this work every day — transition houses, women’s centres, victim services, healthcare providers, and community organizations. Theatre opens the door. These conversations are how we walk through it. Our hope is that audiences leave not only moved, but better connected to the supports that exist in their own communities, and to one another.
We’re especially proud that this work centres senior women — on stage, in the writing, and in the rooms we’ll gather after each show. The experiences of older women facing intimate partner violence are too often invisible. This tour is one way of bringing them into the light, with the dignity they deserve.
Made possible by New Horizons
We’re grateful to share that this tour is supported by funding from the New Horizons for Seniors Program through the Government of Canada. This support makes it possible for us to bring professional theatre to communities across the province, to engage senior artists and audiences, and to build the kind of lasting connections that outlast a single night at the theatre. We couldn’t be more thankful for the vote of confidence in this work.
Why now
We carry this work in memory of Elaine Mosher of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, and of all the women in Nova Scotia and across Canada whose lives have been touched — and too often taken — by intimate partner violence. We believe that stories can break silences, and that communities are stronger when they talk to each other. This tour is our small part in that.
Stay tuned
Tour dates, venues, and ticket details are coming soon — we can’t wait to tell you where we’re headed and when. Follow along here and on our social channels so you don’t miss the announcement, and please help us spread the word.
Keep the Peace is brimming with tension, humour, and heart.