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The Vic

By Leanna Brodie

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 s/he 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 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 humorous 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.

ISBN 13: 9780889224599 | ISBN 10: 889224595
6 W x 9 H inches | 128 pages
$16.95 CAN / $12.95 US
Rights: World
Backlist | Drama | Bisac: DRA013000

About the Contributors

Leanna Brodie is an actor, writer and translator. Her plays (published by Talonbooks) include The Book of Esther, For Home and Country, The Vic and Schoolhouse, as well as CBC radio dramas Invisible City and Seeds of Our Destruction. Her libretti were heard in Tapestry New Opera Works’ Opera to Go 2008; in David Ogborn’s acclaimed site-specific piece, Opera on the Rocks; and in Emergence, his song cycle featuring a singing robot. Schoolhouse has been seen by over twenty thousand Canadians in multiple sold-out runs, and is slated for further productions in 2010.

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