COMING TO THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE (OTTAWA) IN JANUARY 2025

YING: My head feels like a bridge that all of Beijing has been walking over…

In 1983, legendary playwright Arthur Miller embarks on an audacious journey to China, joining forces with theatre luminary Ying Ruocheng and the Beijing People's Art Theatre. Their ambitious project? Staging a Mandarin-language production of Death of a Salesman, with Ying portraying the iconic Willy Loman… and Miller directing, despite speaking not one word of Chinese. 

Facing the monumental challenge of presenting the quintessential American Dream play in the heart of Communist China, Ying and Miller grapple with everything from philosophy to football, all while operating under the scrutiny of a global audience. To pull it off, they must not only navigate clashing worldviews and external pressures, but also face down the ghosts of their past.

Inspired by the memoirs of Ying (with Claire Conceison) and Miller as well as other sources, Salesman in China is an epic cross-cultural adventure, suffused with humour and rooted in the universal theme of fathers and sons. It is also a timeless love letter to the theatre. Sweeping audiences along from first rehearsal to opening night, it documents an unlikely yet unforgettable East-West collaboration that speaks passionately to where we are today.

“A brilliant new play, fully ready to take the world's stages by storm.” – J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail

“A landmark piece of Canadian theatre.” – Joshua Chong, The Toronto Star

“A fascinating new bilingual play.” – The Chicago Tribune

“Salesman in China, which is performed in English and Chinese (with subtitles), will become a hot title stateside… Not only is it a fascinating piece of little-known history, but the engrossing play also boils down a still-contentious, extremely complicated, massively relevant multinational divide into an idea that’s simple, timeless and universal: The show must go on.” – The New York Post

“A complex, engaging and stimulating work” – The Wall Street Journal

Salesman in China
by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy
Suggested by the Memoirs of Arthur Miller and Ying Ruocheng
Chinese Translations by Fang Zhang
Directed by Jovanni Sy

Literary Acknowledgements
• Salesman in Beijing by Arthur Miller with photographs by Inge Morath
• Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China's Revolution and Reform by Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison
• Death of a Salesman a play by Arthur Miller (Chinese translation by Ying Ruocheng)

Contact:
Colin Rivers, Marquis Literary
Colin@MQent.ca | +1 (416) 573-6695

June 1981. Farmers face a debt crisis, with interest rates as high as 24%. More than 300 men are arrested after police sweeps of Toronto bathhouses, yet Pride Toronto launches its first Gay Pride day. Everything’s changing, including fifteen-year-old Esther, who escapes the family farm and runs away to the city. With the help of a brash young hustler and a gay activist who shelters street kids, she confronts her conservative-Christian parents—farmers on the brink of financial ruin—and begins to find her way home. Acclaimed playwright Leanna Brodie excels with this heartwarming coming-of-age, and coming-out, drama.

Cast size: 2F/3M

"Whether or not one agrees with the opinions of the characters is beside the point. Brodie is exploring the possibility of a Canada where the embattled farmer, the gay urbanite, and runaway teenagers can find themselves in this mosaic of ours, through mutual respect …"
—Dr. Lloyd Arnett, Trinity Western University

"...serious themes... snappy dialogue ... a clever and well-crafted play that deserves a long shelf life."
– Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail

"Like The Vic, Leanna Brodie’s play The Book of Esther is filled with tenderness, heart, and humour. It is also an eloquent plea for understanding. It posits that people who feel they are very much on the opposite ends of the belief spectrum can learn to understand human difference."
– Sky Gilbert, playwright and founder of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

The time: 1938. The place: S.S. #1 Jericho School, a one-room schoolhouse in a farming area just outside the fictional village of Baker’s Creek. There, a delightful but unmanageable group of children finally meets its match—Melita Linton, an 18-year-old teacher fresh out of Normal School. But Miss Linton soon faces her own challenge in the form of Ewart, a menacing and mysterious juvenile delinquent sent to “straighten out” on a farm after doing time in Battenville Training School. The play chronicles Miss Linton’s struggle to connect with a boy cut off from everyone, including himself—and to persuade a cautious and close-knit community to open its arms to this stranger in their midst.

Full of warmth and poignant humour, Schoolhouse evokes a way of life shared by generations of rural North Americans, while exploring timeless themes of exclusion, of compassion, of damage, of hope.

With its flexible cast of 10 or more (two dozen speaking roles can be performed by a mix of adults and children, or by adults doubling as children), Schoolhouse has been embraced by school and community groups across Canada as well as by professional theatres. It remains Brodie's most produced play.

Notable productions have included the Blyth Festival premiere, directed by Leah Cherniak; the 4th Line Theatre’s outdoor version, directed by Kim Blackwell in 2007 (brought back for a second consecutive season by popular demand); Jennifer Brewin’s staging for the Festival Players of PEC; and Ken Schwartz’s direction for Two Planks and a Passion in Nova Scotia.

Cast size: 10+, FLEXIBLE.
• In some productions of the play, actors of all ages portay the children, and then double as their own parents. The minimum number of performers in this scenario is 10.
• In other productions, 7 children (ages 5-17) play the students, while a minimum of 6 adult actors (3F/3M) play all the other characters.
• Age, gender, ethnicity, and disability are particularly flexible in this play.

”Leanna Brodie’s play is full of comedy and the high spirits and hijinks of children. However, it has a poignant story at its core that left me thinking, “Why is there no Kleenex in my pocket? Can I use my mask? Do people do that?””
- NS Reviews

"Under the (quite-skilled) storytelling, the play is an exuberantly theatrical and moving tribute to the schoolhouse itself, filled with memories and local details distilled from Brodie’s extensive interviews with former teachers and students who shared the experience of the one-room school."
– Canadian Literature

"A moving piece that brought the audience to its feet."
– The Ottawa Citizen

"A thoughtful … well crafted … beautifully inspired piece. Like Blyth Festival, Schoolhouse is a Canadian story. It is an excellent choice to mark the theatre's 100th milestone."
— The Blyth Citizen

"Playwright Brodie has penned an inspiring, metaphoric work that deals with issues of rejection, isolation, compassion and hope."
— The Sault Star

"Its appeal proved enchanting, not only to those who remember the one-room schoolhouse, but to all who have attended this vibrant production."
– The Valley Gazette

"Leanna Brodie’s rollicking Schoolhouse may be new to the Blyth Festival, but it is clearly already an audience favourite."
– Clinton News-Record

When prickly urbanite Judy inherits her Aunt Kate’s little farm, it seems like the perfect time to change everything: to raise her two young daughters in the fresh country air; to hide away from anything connected with her soon-to-be-ex-husband; and most of all, to be alone. Then she meets Lorna.

Lorna, a lifelong local resident (and local historian), reaches out to Judy by introducing her to the story of her beloved Women’s Institute. As the pages of Lorna’s community history come alive, she spins wonderful tales of women pulling together and beating the odds. But when Judy is finally ready to take a chance on other people again, she discovers that Lorna’s enchanted world is not quite what it seemed: and that finding her place in it is going to be more difficult than either of them imagined.

Founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario in 1897, the Women’s Institute helped lay the foundations of the modern feminist movement. From their humble beginnings, Women’s Institutes spread across Canada and around the world. At their height of popularity, Ontario could boast 1,449 branches with more than 47,000 members; Canadian membership climbed to 87,000 by 1953.

For Home and Country is Leanna Brodie’s reclaiming of this unsung and fascinating piece of herstory: It's also a joyful homage to some great Canadian classics of collectively created, populist theatre— from Paper Wheat to The Farm Show —with their emphasis on lives that had not previously been considered worthy of being celebrated on stage.

Cast size: The minimum size is 7F/1M/2 children with doubling. There are many speaking roles, and a chorus of women who can also play multiple characters if desired, so the play can be scaled up if needed.

"Ms Brodie ties together the history of the organization with a compelling tale of two women trying to bridge a generation gap. The play works on two levels: it is a tongue-in-cheek history of the Women's Institute and a tale of a dynamic relationship between two very different women. Somehow, neither story drowns the other out...  This isn't so much a play about empowerment as it is about bonding. And that's its strength."
– The Peterborough Examiner

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?

Cast size: 8F

"Leanna Brodie has made a promising debut, and her best work here shows real talent." – The Toronto Star

"The drama follows four different yet related storylines involving eight women and explores the concepts of the victim, victimization and power dynamics... While the messages are somber, there are moments of humour and the overall tone is uplifting." – Halifax Chronicle-Herald

"A good play crawls under your skin and leaves you uncomfortably alive with possibility. The Vic does all this and adds an itch you don't want to stop scratching." – Review Vancouver

Audio Plays (produced by CBC)

Invisible City, a poetic look at one woman's daily encounters with the homeless, produced by Bill Lane

Seeds of Our Destruction, an eco-thriller about GMOs run amok, produced by Gregory J. SInclair

Wildfire, the audio version of David Paquet’s hit play featuring the cast of the Factory Theatre production, available as part of the PlayMe podcast

Short Plays

Ensky'd and Sainted, a modern riff on Measure for Measure, featuring Isabella as an astronaut in the space programme. Directed by Marisa Smith as part of Judith Fair [2F] (Vancouver, 2015)

Collaborations

Red Phone, a site-specific work created by Sherry Yoon and Boca del Lupo, with text by Marcus Youssef and Leanna Brodie

The Whistlestop Project, a cross-country work of art and feminist scholarship led by Dr. Dorothy Lander

Articles and essays link here

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; and 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. Salesman in China, co-written with Jovanni Sy, premiered to tremendous acclaim at the Stratford Festival in 2024.

Opera Libretti:
David Ogborn's The Translator and Craig Galbraith's she sees her lover in the light of morning (Tapestry). 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 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 , I Lost My Husband!, and Home Deliveries; 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 and The Weight of Ants are 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:
• 2024 Québec Writers’ Federation Award for Best New Play (shared with Jovanni Sy) for Salesman in China
• 2023 PGC Tom Hendry Award for Best New Play (shared with David Paquet) for her translation of The Weight of Ants
• 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play (shared with David Paquet) for her translation of Wildfire
• 2018 Safewords National New Play Prize (shared with Olivier Sylvestre) for her translation of The Paradise Arms
• Her translations of 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

Brodie, a graduate of the Universities of Guelph and Calgary, has been Assistant Professor (Playwriting) at the UBC School of Creative Writing and Artist-in-Residence at Concordia University. She is a member of CAEA, ACTRA, SOCAN, the Literary Translators Association of Canada (ATTLC-ATC), and the Playwrights Guild of Canada (PGC).