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 this ravenous curiosity and appetite for material and performance that challenges us, both in terms of its content, but also in terms of its form.

Marcus Youssef 05:08

And just if I think about the variety of forms and what you just described, and the variety of, again, organizations and artists working in communities, working on those pieces, it makes me feel really proud of Push, of New World, and of the work we've been able to do over the last couple of decades.

Marcus Youssef 05:26

But to answer your question, to go back to the beginning, and it feels like, I mean, you've talked to Commera about Crime and Punishment, which New World produced in 2004, very early days for Push, year two, or three, or something?

Gabrielle Martin 05:39

The first official festival. The first official festival.

Marcus Youssef 05:42

presentations, but the first official festival and at that time Commier had asked me to take I was teaching at Concordia University of Montreal and Commier, who was artistic director of the New World at the time, wanted to step down and the New World was still quite small at the time and he'd asked me to come out and said, you know, I'll pay, you could make twenty thousand dollars plus free like artistic fees if you come out and take over the company.

Gabrielle Martin 06:04

He said yes.

Marcus Youssef 06:05

Well, not one of the reasons I said yes.

Gabrielle Martin 06:07

Yeah.

Marcus Youssef 06:08

was because he said, you have to come out and see Crime and Punishment. You have to see what's happening here, because I've been gone for a year. And he flew me out to see Crime and Punishment, and I saw this extraordinary piece, which I'm sure Kamir has described, Jimmy Tate and Jelisa Pankaniyya's extraordinary piece that featured, you know, as you know, actors from the downtown east side, students of wide variety of people,

Marcus Youssef 06:30

and in this unbelievably rigorous and precise retelling in which every performer on stage was allowed to be exactly who they were in relationship to the precision that was staged so that it wasn't all exactly the same, but it was so precise and different, how people were different, how the performers were different, was actually the whole point and was like beautifully held and highlighted.

Marcus Youssef 06:55

And I watched that extraordinary production that had, Push had been around longer at the time, had New World been more established as a touring company at that time. There were presenters from all over the place that wanted to bring it with its 18 cast members or whatever, but we just didn't have the capacity.

Marcus Youssef 07:10

And so that had a huge influence on me going, oh, there's a sting going on here. Push, New World, also the other companies that I'm sure you've talked about and are talking with at the time, it was like there's a scene growing here, and that was a big part, not the only part of it, but a big part of my decision and my family's decision to come back.

Gabrielle Martin 07:30

Yeah, that's a big decision. And then you stepped into the role as artistic producer with Adrienne Wong at first.

Marcus Youssef 07:41

No, it was just, well, anyways, boring stuff, it was just me at first, and she was like the producer, and then it was like, oh, we work really well together, and so then we just became co -equal, and then, you know, the leadership model changed over time organically, but it doesn't, nobody really cares about that.

Gabrielle Martin 07:56

So what was your role with realizing, my name is Rachel Corey for the 2008 push festival?

Marcus Youssef 08:02

So it's funny to talk about Rachel Corey in this moment. My name is Rachel Corey. It's a play by, well, it wasn't a play, it's edited versions of Rachel Corey from Olympia Washington's journals and emails that were, after she was murdered by an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer in the Gaza Strip when she laid down, attempting to block the destruction of a Palestinian pharmacist's home.

Marcus Youssef 08:31

And run over by the bulldozer. The actor Alan Rickman and the now Guardian Editor -in -Chief, Katherine Viner, read her writing online and went in the early days of the internet and went, oh my God, she's an extraordinary writer.

Marcus Youssef 08:48

And they edited it together into a one person documentary play that was just literally her writing. And when that,

Gabrielle Martin 08:58

And how did you decide to do that work, and where was that in relation to your work with New World? Was that the first production? Was that early on?

Marcus Youssef 09:10

It was early on, I can't remember, it was certainly one of the first big programming decisions I made and I knew that the writing was extraordinary.

Gabrielle Martin 09:22

to hear them.

Marcus Youssef 09:22

Rachel's from Olympia which is just across the border from here and I knew that that it was critically important to me that we share that work. The play caused controversy. It was called anti -Semitic usually by people who never read the play.

Marcus Youssef 09:37

There's nothing anti -Semitic about the play. It is absolutely opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine but Rachel is an extraordinary humanist and push jumped on board right away.

Gabrielle Martin 09:52

So what was your, how did that conversation happen with Push and how, what was your relationship with Push at that time? Like the New World had had a relationship through crime and punishment.

Marcus Youssef 10:01

Yeah, I mean, it's Vancouver and these were early days and everything was smaller for us in our scene then. So it's like Norman was like, we all we all, Norman was our mentor, many of us, right? Adrian, myself, Commyar, like Michael and Jamie from Theatre Replacement.

Marcus Youssef 10:13

He was our mentor. We used to all at one point or other made ten dollars an hour sitting in his kind of grotty apartment of commercial drive doing data entry for him. You know, when he was running Rumble Theatre, another small company.

Marcus Youssef 10:24

So these were relationships that had already existed. And so because it was a scene that was just beginning to emerge, right? But the thing about working with Norman and it was true from the very beginning, always.

Marcus Youssef 10:43

Whatever his trickiness with budget sometimes. He was the most collaborative artistic leader I have ever worked with. He believed in those around him and their impulses and enabling their impulses and doing everything he could.

Marcus Youssef 11:01

I mean, crime was, I'm sure Commyar told this, but crime was a great example. He just kept telling Commyar, how many people do you need? You know, when Commyar would be would go to Jimmy and like and that was what happened with Rachel Corey.

Marcus Youssef 11:13

I was like, this is an important piece. I think it should be a push. I think it should be in our international festival now that we seem to maybe have one. And Norman said, yes, absolutely. And yeah, and all sorts of amazing things.

Marcus Youssef 11:28

I mean, you don't want to. I don't know. It's easy when doing these things to kind of do rose tinted, make everything sound great. Like it was, you know, but a lot of really great things happen. Like we did it at the Vanna on commercial drive, a very unusual venue.

Marcus Youssef 11:42

But because it was in this neighborhood, because it felt like in the community, because we wanted to be in an unorthodox space for this. And Norman was completely into that. I mean, the show, the only problem with it was it was too small and, you know, we sold out so quickly.

Marcus Youssef 11:59

It was, you know, it was it was impossible to get people access to the show who want everybody wanted to see it. But also push was immediately very, you know, community partnerships. And, you know, one of the things we did, I was connected to and a rabbi of a liberal congregation here, Rabbi David Mivis, a really beautiful man and thinker and provocative kind of activist.

Marcus Youssef 12:22

And we created community nights for his congregation to come and see the show on their own like in a kind of safe space. Long before we were using words like safe space and to talk with us afterwards.

Marcus Youssef 12:34

And those are some of the most productive and exciting conversations I've ever had after shows. They weren't easy, but they were fantastic. So, yeah, that level of like attention, care and detail and also support of mine and my collaborators, artistic impulses and and also community, communitarian impulses were always at the center of of how the relationship worked.

Marcus Youssef 12:58

Budgets sometimes got a little tricky.

Gabrielle Martin 13:01

I know that's really clear in what you're sharing, that care, I think, is really clear with regard to also really thinking about how the audience is going to best experience the work or how the kind of space that will do justice to the piece and the kind of conversations that need to happen around it to really...

Gabrielle Martin 13:19

Yeah, exactly.

Marcus Youssef 13:21

Yeah, we were doing that work, and it was it was good And there were protests and there was a big article in the Globe and Mail and people called me and denounced me and you Know for being anti -Semitic and because you didn't there was no social media at the time Or it was very early days, but but that was fine, too I mean, it's interesting it's different now with the social media to everything just goes In a way that it you know it just it's all it all feels like a tire fire immediately now and at the time it didn't It was stressful,

Marcus Youssef 13:50

but it also felt like you could address things

Gabrielle Martin 13:53

And it sounds like you were creating and realizing it within a community that was quite supportive between the company and also it sounds like in partnership with the festival, which I'm sure made a difference in fielding that criticism.

Marcus Youssef 14:09

How can we, like for me the question is always like, how can we engage others who may, you know, may be critical but want to engage? Do you know what I mean? Like that's always the, I mean, people who don't want to engage or just want to, you know, shit all over you, that's fine.

Marcus Youssef 14:24

Like you just kind of have to ignore that as you well know. But creating opportunities for real engagement with folks who, yeah, who may be troubled or upset but have the desire to engage. That's where for me it gets really exciting.

Gabrielle Martin 14:41

And I know that Back -to -Back Theatre, which is an international company which has been presented at PUSH, it's now been presented at PUSH a few times, but that seeing their work was quite influential and the beginning of future collaborations, can you just talk about where that fits into this stream of PUSH?

Marcus Youssef 15:01

Let's just maybe, you know, maybe hop over Nene, a, I can't remember the exact, a documentary play. A documentary play, is that right? Nene, a documentary play?

Gabrielle Martin 15:15

A testimonial play. A testimonial play. Sorry, I forgot. In 2009. And we didn't kind of...

Marcus Youssef 15:18

briefly skip over that but just to mention it because that was like another great example of like I had nothing artistically to do with that but it was Alex Ferguson and Caleb Fraser but but like another beautiful example of like these you know this incredible show about Filipino nannies and caregiving workers and in based on all this research whatever I won't go into it all but installation play then again at the end had this incredible community event where the audience sat around in the final kind of act of the play or the event sat around and had a facilitated conversation and many people who employed Filipino nannies brought their Filipino nannies to the show and again it was so complicated because the the employers would often be like hey so you don't talk talk say what you think you know oh my god yeah and then nannies in these the employed in this very interesting and weird complicated situation where almost being expected sometimes to perform their own liberation or something inside this like so dramatic so complicated and again really for me indicative of how push created opportunities for you know the kinds of complicated formal and content events like to take place that that I don't think there would have been a place for in the city prior to push existing so anyway but just skip briefly over that or to just say that about that one but but yeah so shortly after that I guess is when I began working with Niall McNeil who people who pay attention might might be familiar with a playwright and an actor whose life includes Down syndrome and we'd started writing this project together Peter Panties he'd wanted to adapt Peter Pant he doesn't really write or writes at the level of a sort of kindergarten somebody in kindergarten but he always is identified as a writer and we'd started work on that and but you know I had to figure out how we were gonna do that together and that around that time push presented back to back which is a mixed ability company and kind of international art stars as well based near Melbourne and we went I went and saw the small metal objects at push and I won't you know I can go on and on I won't describe the show in too much detail but was in the library and we were in the atrium of the library and we were all on risers and the library was still functioning people were coming and going and we all had headsets or earphones I should earbuds and at some point there was music and it all just looked like real life was a dance and then there was at some point we started hear people talk and then we suddenly realized the action was happening in the midst of real life when we started we could identify where they were and it was mixed about both neurotypical and neurodiverse actors and one of the most extraordinary shows I've ever seen and it was a talk back that night and I stayed for the talk back and the talk back was really complicated and confusing between the neurodiverse and neurotypical artists and when I saw that I went okay it's gonna be okay because that's just as complicated as what I'm experiencing with Nile and these guys who are international art stars they haven't figured it out either so it's gonna be okay and that was huge huge for me and and then you know we you know you know fast -forward nine years or ten years or whatever it is and we were collaborating with back -to -back on the Democratic Senate push you know and working quite closely with them and I was doing workshops for them and you know

Gabrielle Martin 18:48

And so that relation, you just kept in touch from that point, or you got back in touch, you were put in touch by push, or did that relationship come about to the point that you collaborated? Yeah. I always say that, like...

Marcus Youssef 19:00

you know I have a lot of international relationships now and I do a lot of international collaboration and I would say that hey you can't like parse it exactly but honestly 80% of it like at some point usually fairly recently is because of push like literally like without I mean that's where it becomes really obvious to me it's like without push my career would look nothing like it looks period

Gabrielle Martin 19:25

Mmm.

Gabrielle Martin 19:28

let's talk about winners and losers a bit so yeah a collaboration with theater replacement what was winners and