Founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario in 1897, the Women’s Institute played three key roles which helped lay the foundations of the feminist movement. It provided a means for the continuing education of rural women, often not schooled beyond the elementary level, at first in practical areas of homemaking, home nursing and food preparation and preservation, then later in professional areas, providing much needed information such as how a woman could establish and protect her legal rights to property. Very early on, Women’s Institute members also began to use their local branches as a forum to lobby for social change, including public health reforms, medical and dental inspections in rural schools, and in some cases even to further the cause of female suffrage. Finally, the Women’s Institute also created an avenue for an evolving female sociability and a context for the evolution of a gender-based identity politics. From their humble beginnings, Women’s Institutes spread widely throughout Ontario, 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 dramatizes the generational conflict created by the rise of an urban and radicalized feminist agenda in the latter part of the 20th century and its head-on collision with its much more conservative, rural roots in the Women’s Institute. It is also Leanna Brodie’s homage to the techniques of Canadian populist theatre—grounded in the work of Theatre Passe Muraille—and its ability to tell stories about the power and dignity of ordinary lives that had not previously been considered capable or worthy of being told.

Leanna Brodie is an actor, writer and translator. Her plays (published by Talonbooks) include For Home and Country, The Vic and Schoolhouse, as well as CBC radio dramas Invisible City and Seeds of Our Destruction. She was the first Canadian invited to the ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights’ Festival. She also translates Quebec drama into English—most recently, Louise Bombardier’s Ma mère chien and Hélène Ducharme’s Baobab. 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. The Angle of Reflection, with New Zealand composer Anthony Young, was produced by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. This season, The Book of Esther, a love story about urban queers and rural evangelicals, premieres at the Blyth Festival. Schoolhouse has been seen by over 20, 000 Canadians in multiple sold-out runs, and is slated for further productions in 2010.

Leanna Brodie's profile page

“The play's generosity of spirit equals that of the Women's Institutes that are its subject.”
— Ric Knowles