Lion in the Streets

Its central character is the ghost Isobel, a nine-year-old Portuguese girl who is searching for her killer by observing and occasionally interacting with her neighbors seventeen years after her murder, revealing their dark, horrific, emotional, and very private experiences.

The original ensemble was composed of four women and two men who split the roles up roughly as follows (there is some confusion in the Playwrights Canada Press printing, as some character names in the initial list do not actually exist in the play, and some characters who do speak are omitted entirely): Women: Men: Isobel's ghost wanders around lost, in a playground.

(Thompson, Lion in the Streets, line 11–13)[2] A woman named Sue comes to her rescue from other kids picking on her.

As Maria tells of her vision of her husband dying, Isobel dramatically acts out her father falling onto the train tracks.

Isobel watches a conversation between Sherry and her boyfriend quickly escalate into a fight where he makes her relive a rape that happened to her years before.

Sherry lays down at her grave, and as Ben continues to tell his story of justification of why he killed Isobel, she confronts him.

One of the themes of the play is the difficult lives experienced by immigrants (shown by Isobel's father's job as a manual laborer, and his subsequent suicide).

The difference with Lion in the Streets is that it has a main character, Isobel, whose thread we follow throughout the play as she witnesses the other scenes take place.

Isobel continually encounters evil and violence within the city; Judith Thompson is showing a sort of "hidden" side of Toronto and discussing issues that are often taboo.

The play looks away from the "upper-class, male-centered, high-art paradigm" to "[locate] freedom and power for a lower-class, female, immigrant-child.

This is a $25,000 award for plays by Canadian playwrights and performed in the Toronto area, named after Floyd Chalmers, the editor, publisher, and philanthropist.

In 2002, Ed Gass-Donnelly directed a 6-minute film, Dying Like Ophelia, based on the scene between the characters Joanne and Rhonda.