Leanna Brodie is an actor, playwright, and translator whose passions include lifting up the stories and voices of women; exploring and exploding the ever-widening rural-urban divide; as well as championing a new generation of French-Canadian playwrights by transmitting their extraordinary theatrical visions into the English language.

Original Plays:
The Vic, For Home and Country, The Book of Esther, and Schoolhouse, published by Talon Books, have been performed across Canada and the US.

Opera Libretti:
David Ogborn's The Translator and Craig Galbraith's she sees her lover in the light of morning (Tapestry), and the New Zealand composer Anthony Young's The Angle of Reflection (Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra). Brodie and Young’s award-winning Ulla’s Odyssey was workshopped by the Opera Factory in Auckland NZ; premiered at Kings Place, London in 2015 (OperaUpClose); and subsequently toured the UK for two seasons. Brodie is an alumna of the Tapestry New Opera Composer-Librettist Laboratory, and she collaborated with composer Ogborn on the highly successful site-specific piece Opera on the Rocks at Toronto’s Paupers Pub… before pub opera was a thing.

Translations:
Christian Bégin’s After Me and Why Are You Crying?; Louise Bombardier’s My Mother Dog; Fanny Britt’s Benevolence; Annie Brocoli’s Stella: The Time Machine Journey; Rébecca Déraspe’s You Are Happy, I Am William, The Lessons, and Gametes; Joe Jack et John’s Violette; Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska, Becoming Chelsea, and Two-Part Inventions; Angela Konrad’s Auditions, or, Me, Myself, and I; Catherine Léger’s Opium_37 and I Lost My Husband!; David Paquet’s Wildfire, The Weight of Ants, and The Shoe; Gilles Poulin-Denis’s Outside; Olivier Sylvestre’s The Paradise Arms and The Desert; Philippe Soldevila’s Emigration Trilogy; Larry Tremblay’s Panda Panda; and multiple plays by Hélène Ducharme of Théâtre Motus, whose acclaimed, Dora Award-winning Baobab continues to tour China and the Americas after more than 600 performances. You Are Happy, Gametes, Wildfire & The Shoe and My Mother Dog are published by Playwrights Canada Press; I Am William is published by Scirocco Drama.

Residencies:
Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Gateway Theatre, Playwrights Theatre Centre Associates, and multiple residencies at the Blyth Festival, 4th Line Theatre, Hedgebrook, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Glassco Residency in Translation.

Awards and Recognition:
• 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play (shared with David Paquet) for the translation of Wildfire
• David Paquet’s The Shoe - which she translated for the jury - won Vancouver’s 2019 Jessie Award for Best New Play
• The Paradise Arms (translated from Olivier Sylvestre’s La beauté du monde), won the Safewords National New Play Prize in 2018
• Rébecca Déraspe’s You Are Happy and Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska have been finalists for the Tom Hendry Awards
• Christian Bégin's After Me for Ruby Slippers Theatre received 2 Jessie Awards and 4 nominations, including Best Production
• Jessie Award-nominated for her performances in Pi Theatre's Terminus (in English) and in the ensemble of Théátre la Seizième’s Bonjour, là, bonjour (in French)
• Ulla’s Odyssey (her opera with Anthony Young) won both the Flourish Prize (UK) and the Opera Factory New Work Competition (NZ)
• Nominated for the K.M. Hunter Prize
• Listed as one of NOW Magazine’s Top Ten Toronto Theatre Artists

Current:
Writing projects: Collaborating with Jovanni Sy on a new play, Salesman in China, co-commissioned by the Stratford Festival and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Translation projects: new works by Rébecca Déraspe, Hélène Ducharme, Joey Lesperance, and Gabriel Sabourin

Brodie is currently Assistant Professor (Playwriting) at the UBC School of Creative Writing. She is an Associate Artist at Ruby Slippers Theatre and a member of CAEA, ACTRA, SOCAN, the Literary Translators Association of Canada (ATTLC-ATC), and the Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC).