With the help of a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts, she decided to pursue writing and eventually enrolled at McGill to study English literature in 1955.
Rosen's short plays The Crusader and Triangle, Preparing, and Green Lawn Rest Home, reveal a growing frustration with the production restrictions of a realism-oriented Canadian theatre establishment.
Instead, her works explore fantasy, brinksmanship, and madness through choral and movement elements that de-stabilize notions of identity, fragment time, and expose power structures within families and communities.
The size of the cast, the fluid multi-location setting, and the complex social commentary combined with raw emotional undercurrents of the play might have scared producers seeking Canadian hit shows.
A master's thesis suggests that the time for Leela Means to Play will "come around" in a future where civil rights issues of the 1960s and 1970s excite more detailed attention, rather than seeming dated.