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. Marcus has served as an assistant professor at Concordia University in Montreal and on faculty at Capilano University in North Vancouver, where he implemented Canada's first collaborative, interdisciplinary Bachelors' degree in Performance, offered jointly with Douglas and Langara Colleges. Marcus lectures widely, and still teaches regularly at Langara's Studio 58, the University of British Columbia, and the National Theatre School. Marcus graduated from NTS's Acting Program and holds an MFA from UBC. He lives in Vancouver's Commercial Drive area with his partner, teacher Amanda Fritzlan, and their sons Oscar and Zak.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

Gabrielle Martin 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and in this special series of Push Play, we're investigating the legacy of Push and talking to creators who've helped shape 20 years of innovative, dynamic, and audacious festival programming.

Gabrielle Martin 00:24

Today's episode features Marcus Yousef and is anchored around the 2013 Push Festival. Writer, performer, and cultural activist, Marcus Yousef's 15 or so plays have been produced in multiple languages in more than 20 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia, and at the Push Festival many times, often with New World Theatre.

Gabrielle Martin 00:46

His work is often collaborative, highly personal, and almost always investigates questions of difference, belonging, and descent. He is a recipient of Canada's largest theater award, the Semenet Bitch Prize for Theatre, as well as the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award, an honorary fellowship from Douglas College Berlin, Germany's Icarus Prize, the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmers Canadian Play Award,

Gabrielle Martin 01:12

and the Vancouver Critics Innovation Award three times. And for New World Theatre, since its founding in 1994, it has created, produced, and toured new plays, performance events, and digital works. Its mission is to center stories and perspectives that seek to dismantle systems of oppression, and its motto is, plays well with others.

Gabrielle Martin 01:33

Here's my conversation with Marcus.

Gabrielle Martin 01:38

We are here on stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh. It's an absolute privilege to be here. We are also on this land. This is your backyard.

Marcus Youssef 01:56

It's nice in a very nice backyard, yeah.

Gabrielle Martin 01:58

in the commercial drive area, which is the area, the neighborhood where I met you, you know. When you were 10 years old. Many years ago, yes, yes. And so this is a, it's always nice to speak with Marcus, but Marcus has been a mentor of mine, and so today will be a nice opportunity to dive into your history, your relationship with Push, mostly through your role with New World Theatre, though it still continues today in other,

Gabrielle Martin 02:23

you know, working in other aspects of your practice, because you're an actor, you're a director at times, still. Sometimes, yeah. Yes, yeah, writer. The very first New World Theatre project with Push was Crime and Punishment in 2005, and we did have the chance to talk to Kamiar the other day about that project.

Gabrielle Martin 02:44

I'm just gonna go through these productions, and then we'll kind of walk chronologically through the relationship with Push. So my name is Rachel Corey, who was presented in 2008 by Push. Nanae, a testimonial play with Urban Inc.

Gabrielle Martin 03:00

and Philippine Women's Center of BC in 2009. Peter Panties with Leaky Heaven Circus in 2011. Pod Plays, The Quartet with Playwrights Theatre Center in 2011. Deustry F. Skis, The Idiot with Vancouver Moving Theatre in 2012.

Gabrielle Martin 03:18

Winners and Losers with Theatre Replacement in 2013, which we'll definitely be speaking about today, because there's a long history with theatre replacement and New World, so that's a great project to highlight.

Gabrielle Martin 03:29

And Leftovers in 2016, King Arthur's Night, and Inside Out in 2018, and The Democratic set with Back to Back Theatre in 2020. Finally, in this last festival, 2024, you were a writer on Because I Love the Diversity, This Micro Attitude, We All Have It, a project by Rakesh Zukesh.

Gabrielle Martin 03:50

Okay, so take us to the beginning. How did your relationship with Push start?

Marcus Youssef 03:57

Yeah, wow, it's weird hearing you just go through that list. It both makes me feel really proud and makes me feel really old at the same time. I think, I actually, if it's OK, just want to say something that came to me as I was listening to you, which I think speaks to both Push and New World and the relationship and also the scene that was built in the last 20 years.

Marcus Youssef 04:22

Which is, if you just think about all those shows, and many people, of course, won't know many of the shows, and all the different organizations of partners and artists who were working on those shows, and the vast array of styles, and forms, and agendas, and ideas, and questions that were at the heart of those shows.

Marcus Youssef 04:43

Vastly different, and yet, at the same time, I would argue, united by something that I think has been central to Push's way of working in the community for two decades, which is t