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In "The Vic" an ensemble of different ages and ethnicities explores the power of the victim. Cast of 8 women.
A propos de l'auteur
Leanna Brodie is a Montréal-based actor, playwright, librettist, and translator whose work is celebrated across Canada and internationally. Her original plays-including
The Vic,
For Home and Country,
The Book of Esther, and
Schoolhouse-are published by Talonbooks and have been performed widely in Canada and the United States. Her latest play,
Salesman in China, co-written with Jovanni Sy, premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2024 and transferred to the National Arts Centre in 2025.
Brodie's libretti include
Ulla's Odyssey (with Anthony Young), which toured the UK with OperaUpClose and won both the Flourish Prize (UK) and the Opera Factory New Work Competition (NZ);
The Translator (David Ogborn);
she sees her lover in the light of morning (Craig Galbraith); and
The Angle of Reflection (Anthony Young, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra).
As a translator, she has brought to English the works of many leading Québécois and Franco-Canadian playwrights, including Rébecca Déraspe (
You Are Happy,
I Am William,
Gametes,
Les Glaces), David Paquet (
Wildfire,
The Weight of Ants,
The Shoe), Catherine Léger (
Opium_37,
I Lost My Husband!,
Home Deliveries), and Hélène Ducharme (
Baobab). Her translations have been produced across North America and internationally, with several published by Playwrights Canada Press and Scirocco Drama.
Brodie has held residencies at the Blyth Festival, 4th Line Theatre, Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Gateway Theatre, and Playwrights Theatre Centre. She has also taught playwriting at the University of British Columbia and Concordia University.
Leanna Brodie
Her recent accolades include the 2024 Québec Writers' Federation Award for Best New Play (shared with Jovanni Sy) for
Salesman in China, the 2023 PGC Tom Hendry Award for Best New Play (shared with David Paquet) for her translation of
The Weight of Ants, and the 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play (shared with David Paquet) for her translation of
Wildfire.
Résumé
A young woman has disappeared at the edge of the city. Four women are drawn into the race to find her. As we watch them grid-search the fields for traces of her passing, we move through the shattering events of their recent lives that have left them as lost as she is. Mentor and protégé, lovers and sisters, they explore one burning question: who’s got the power, and what is he or she going to do with it?
Redolent with ambiguity, playing on the multiple meanings of victim, victory, and theatricality while undermining and interrogating these conventions, The Vic creates an ensemble of sharply drawn characters: eight ethnically diverse women, ranging in age from their teens to their fifties, each of them eager to claim the entitlement they feel their status as victim has “naturally” conferred upon them.
Drawing on the cult of Rock Thériault (aka “Moses”) near Burnt River, Ontario, in the early 1980s, and the Bernardo case, The Vic starts out where the popular media coverage of these events leaves off: with the media’s inability to penetrate the humanity of its subjects beyond the constructed veils of saints and sinners; evil perpetrators and innocent, “helpless” victims. It is an unsparing, often shocking, sometimes incredibly humourous dramatization of how the status of victim has become the most powerful and effective manipulative tool for social advancement in an age where all public discourse begins and ends with the populist media motto, “if it bleeds it leads.”
Cast of 8 women.
