Collaboration over Competition (2013)

Gabrielle Martin chats with Vancouver-based playwright, artistic director and author Marcus Youssef.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Marcus discuss: 

• Questions of difference, belonging and dissent

• Dismantling systems of oppression

• Crime and Punishment in 2005

• How did your relationship with PuSh start?

• How to bring vastly different perspectives, styles, forms, organizations, communities, agendas, etc. together in a united festival of theatre

• How to grow a “scene” like PuSh has become?

• Why discussing the piece, “My Name is Rachel Corrie”, is difficult today

• How has social media changed the reception of theatre and the shaping of controversy?

• How did PuSh create the place for complicated, provocative work?

• How did the process of “Winners and Losers” unfold?

• What was your own trajectory in the theatre?

• Choosing collaboration over competition in the Vancouver indie scene

About Marcus Youssef

Marcus’ dozen or so plays, some of which were co-written with friends and colleagues, include Winners and Losers, Leftovers, Jabber, How Has My Love Affected You?, Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, Everyone, 3299: Forms in Order, Adrift, Peter Panties, Chloe’s Choice and A Line in the Sand. Though widely varied in terms of style and content, they often some way investigate fundamental questions of difference or “otherness.” They have been performed at theatres and festivals (and school gyms) across Canada, the US, Australia and Europe, including: the Dublin Theatre Festival, Soho Rep (Off-Broadway), Festival Trans Ameriques, PuSh Festival (four times), Foreign Affairs (Berlin), the Brighton Festival (UK), LOKAL (Reykjavik), the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canadian Stage, Wooly Mammoth and the Kennedy Centre (Washington, DC), Tarragon, Factory, the Caravan Farm Theatre, the Arts Club, the Citadel, Noorderzon (Netherlands), Ca Foscari (Venice), Brno Festival (Czech), Aarhus Festival (Denmark), On the Boards (Seattle) the Magnetic North Festival (five times), and many others.

Marcus’ work has been translated into multiple languages and is published by both Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. He is the recipient of more than a dozen national and international awards, including the Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Seattle Times Footlight Award, the Vancouver Critics’ Innovation Award (three times), a Governor General’s Award nomination, as well as multiple local awards and nominations in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. He has been playwright in residence at the Banff Centre, the National Theatre School, Neworld, and Touchstone Theatre. Currently Marcus is an editorial advisor to Canadian Theatre Review, Senior Playwright in Residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and a Canadian Fellow to the International Society of Performing Arts. 

Also a writer in other forms, Marcus’ essays, journalism and fiction have appeared in Vancouver Magazine, the Vancouver Sun, Grain, Ricepaper, This Magazine, CTR, the Georgia Straight, The Tyee, on numerous blogs and web magazines and many programs on CBC Radio and TV.

Also well-known in Vancouver as a cultural advocate, Marcus has been artistic director of one of the city’s best-known indie producing companies, Neworld Theatre, since 2005. He was the inaugural chair of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council, co-chaired the Vancouver municipal political party the Coalition of Progressive Electors.  In 2009, Marcus co-founded of Progress Lab 1422, a 6,000 s.f., collaboratively managed rehearsal and production hub in East Vancouver shared by Neworld and three other established independent companies.