About the Play:

Winner of the 2011 ACTivist Theatre Amnesty International Playwright Contest

Leave of Absence is a full-length drama by Lucia Frangione. One young school girl's coming of age results in a terrible crime in this searing drama of bullying, bigotry and transcendence in a small town. Leave of Absence is a complex look at sexuality, violence, religion, and a community's responsibility to its youth.

Leave of Absence revolves around a teenage girl who is bullied over issues of religion and sexual orientation, and the points of view of four adults in her life. The booming bedroom community outside a large Canadian city is torn apart when fifteen-year-old Blake challenges long-held views of spirituality and sexuality. A student at the local Catholic high school, Blake confides in her best friend, Tracy, that she feels sexually attracted to her. At first encouraged and then rebuffed, Blake is eventually betrayed. Then, increasingly at risk among her peers, Blake finds the watchful and strict eyes of her Catholic school are no protection. Vulnerable to collective hatred by the adults who guard her freedom – her mother, the school principal, the local priest – all respond in different ways. Some liberally supporting her emerging sexuality; others quite conservatively vilifying her as a deviant outside the church and outside the community. Ultimately they do not act to protect her, and she is brutally assaulted by a group of boys. The audience is left with the question: What have we left undone? At the centre of this searing drama of bigotry and transcendence is the brutal dehumanization of the other – of both the bully and the victim. Full of humour, compassion and mysticism, it also asks the greater community about the ethics of being absent and our role in the LGBTQ+ community. Are we turning a blind eye? What does love and acceptance look like?

Leave of Absence premiered in 2013 at Pacific Theatre in Vancouver. The Eastern Canada premiere was in 2017 at The Community Culture House in George's Brook-Milton, Newfoundland and Labrador. Since then it has been performed in 2019 at the Walterdale Theatre in Edmonton.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male

What people say:

"One of our most consistently interesting playwrights: intellectually and theologically sophisticated with a strong dose of eroticism and a nice sense of humour." — Vancouverplays.com

About the Playwright:

Lucia Frangione is an internationally produced award winning Canadian playwright and actor, best known for performing in her own works. The author of over twenty-five plays, she received training through Studio 58 and Rosebud School of the Arts.