Charlottetown Festival

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The Charlottetown Festival is a seasonal Canadian musical theatre festival which runs from late May to mid-October every year since 1965.

Named after its host city, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, since its inception the festival has showcased Canada's most popular and longest-running musical, Anne of Green Gables - The Musical, as well as having sought out and commissioned over 66 new Canadian musicals, including the 2005 and 2006 productions of Canada Rocks, the Festival's most popular long-running production after Anne.

Hosted in the Confederation Centre of the Arts, every year the Charlottetown Festival features some of Canada's finest performers, designers, playwrights, composers, and directors in a professional showcase of musical theatre and comedy.

Past Artistic Directors of the Festival include Mavor Moore, Alan Lund, and Walter Learning. Learning ignited a storm of controversy across the country in 1987 when he presented the Alan Bleasdale musical Are You Lonesome Tonight? a tough look at the life of Elvis Presley. Objections to the rough language and adult subject matter were even brought up in the provincial legislature. However, the musical was a major critical success for the Charlottetown Festival and became the only Festival production to equal Anne of Green Gables in ticket sales during its first season.