Brodie, Leanna (Canada)
Leanna Brodie is an actor, writer, and translator whose plays For Home and Country, The Vic, Schoolhouse, and The Book of Esther are published by Talonbooks Ltd. She was the first Canadian invited to Seattle’s Women Playwrights Festival; has been Playwright-in-Residence at the Blyth Festival and 4th Line Theatre; and wrote Invisible City and Seeds of Our Destruction for CBC Radio. Her translations include Louise Bombardier’s My Mother Dog. Since attending Tapestry’s renowned composer-librettist laboratory, she has collaborated with composers Craig Galbraith, Anthony Young, and David Ogborn – most notably on the site-specific hit Opera on the Rocks. In 2009, she and Young premiered The Angle of Reflection with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Currently, Brodie is developing a new play, The Angel’s Cradle, as a member of the Tarragon Theatre Playwrights Unit.
Brodie's play Schoolhouse, a spirited look at life in a rural one-room school in 1937 that also tackles subjects like community and exclusion, has been performed across Canada by high schools, universities, community groups, and professional theatres, and used as part of an anti-bullying curriculum in Ontario.
Brodie is also a frequent translator of French-language work for young audiences. Her English translation of Hélène Ducharme's Baobab - which won second prize at IPAY - has been toured all over North America by Québec's award-winning Théâtre Motus, which is also producing her translation of Ducharme's Tiger By the Tail. Other translations for young audiences include Philippe Soldevila's moving Tales of the Moon, which premiered at Canada's National Arts Centre with Théâtre les Confettis in 2011, as well as Larry Tremblay's hilarious Panda Panda (workshopped at Young People's Theatre) and Sébastien Harrisson's gorgeous, Governor General's Award-nominated From Alaska (the first project of the Quebec Translation Exchange at the Banff Centre for the Arts). She and composer Anthony Young are now collaborating on an opera for young audiences called Ulla’s Odyssey, about a young girl solo sailing around the world.