About the Play:

For Home and Country is a full-length comedy with music by Leanna Brodie. Judy is a middle-aged, quintessentially downtown feminist who impulsively decides to move to a farm inherited from an aunt. Lorna is a smart and stoic older widow who has lived her whole life in the country. For Home and Country is a comedy about friendship, the urban/rural divide, and the history of the Women's Institute, which has been a beloved rural institution for over a hundred years.

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 also chronicles liberal feminism's head-on collision with its much more conservative, rural roots in the Women's Institute. When prickly suburbanite 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, a lifelong local resident (and local historian), who 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. At the same time For Home and Country tells the story of the rural women's institutes that began at the turn of the 20th century. Founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario in 1897, the Women's Institute (once known as the Rural Women's University) 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 premiered in 2004 at 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook, near Peterborough, Ontario. This big, affectionate bake-sale of a play was a smash hit at the 4th Line Theatre, two years in a row.

Cast: 7 female, 1 male, 2 girls with doubling (alternate casting 7 female, 3 male, 2 girls, and a chorus of women who can also play multiple characters if desired, so the play can be scaled up if needed)

What people say:

"The play's generosity of spirit equals that of the Women's Institutes that are its subject." — Ric Knowles Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph

"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

About the Playwright:

Leanna Brodie is a Canadian playwright, translator, and actor whose work has been performed across Canada, the USA, the UK, and New Zealand. She was the first Canadian invited to the ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights' Festival in Seattle, and has twice been Playwright-in-Residence at the 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook, Ontario.