Out the Window

In August 2000, Liza Balkan witnessed the beating death of a man named Otto Vass during an altercation with the police in the west end of Toronto. Called to the witness stand on a number of occasions over several years, Balkan found herself needing to delve more deeply into what had happened. Seven years after the incident she started a creative journey, inviting others into a multi-year process of turning verbatim court transcripts, audio, video, and text derived from interviews with lawyers, officers, family members of the deceased, activists and artists, into a documentary theatre project that examines policing and police violence, use of force, mental illness, racism, the justice system, witnessing, and memory.

This book chronicles this project's process through its various iterations and includes the script from The Theatre Centre/Luminato Festival co-production in Toronto in 2018, directed by Sarah Garton Stanley.