About the Play:

Winner of the 2016 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer prize)

Pig Girl is a full-length drama by Colleen Murphy. At 4:00 a.m. on a secluded farm, a woman fights to take her life back from a serial killer as her desperate sister and a haunted police officer reach across time and distance in an attempt to rescue her.

Inspired by the case of serial killer Robert Pickton, Pig Girl focuses on Killer who has taken prisoner Dying Girl in a secluded barn. It is a tragedy, since we know she will die at his hands. But she is not a victim: she fights back, her act of defiance reminds us of her humanity, of her identity. Her voice is that of many, of those that cannot or will not be heard. Alongside is the story of her Sister who desperately, yet relentlessly confronts a justice system that is painfully slow at dealing with the disappearance of marginalized women. Sister files a police report, but the police let the case slide. After nine years, new evidence comes to light, and it looks like Sister's instincts may have been right all along.

Pig Girl premiered in 2013 at Theatre Network in Edmonton, Alberta. It won the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama and the prestigious Carol Bolt Award. The European premiere was in 2015 at Finborough Theatre in the West Brompton area of London.

Cast: 2 women, 2 men

What people say:

"... a deeply feminist, profoundly political work." — Public Reviews (London)

"Murphy writes from the heart and with a strong sense of indignation." — The Guardian

"... this is unusual theatre, brave and bold and violent and, in its honesty, an opening into a necessary discussion we don't often force ourselves to have. It's not preaching a message - Murphy was adamant about that in the interviews leading up to the show - but instead, Pig Girl seems engineered to make you feel this damage more than think about it. (That's left to you, in its aftermath.) And in that, it's a stunning, haunting success." — Vue Weekly

About the Playwright:

Colleen Murphy is a Canadian playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. She is best known for her plays The December Man (L'homme de décembre), which won the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, and Pig Girl, which won the same award in 2016, and the film Termini Station, for which she garnered a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 11th Genie Awards. She has twice won awards in the CBC Literary Competition. Her distinct, award-winning films have played in festivals around the world.