The Vic

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 its 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"

"This first play by Leanna Brodie ... features the kind of dramatic electricity that announces the presence of a true plawright .... Leanna Brodie has made a promising debut, and her best work here shows real talent" ~ Toronto Star