Winners and Losers

(2012-2017)

Winners and Losers is a staged conversation that embraces the ruthless logic of capitalism, and tests its impact on our closest personal relationships as well as our most intimate experiences of self. Theatre artists and long-time friends Marcus Youssef and James Long sit at a table and play a game they made up, called Winners and Losers. In it, they name people, places or things — Tom Cruise, microwave ovens, their fathers, rainforests, druids, etc. — and debate whether these things are winners or losers. As each seeks to defeat the other, the debate becomes highly personal, as they dissect each other's individual, familial and class histories. And because one of these men is the product of economic privilege, and the other not, the competition very quickly begins to cost.

Winners and Losers. Photo by Matt Reznek.

Written and performed by Marcus Youssef and James Long, with direction by Chris Abraham, lighting design by Jonathan Ryder and production management by Elia Kirby. Co-produced with Neworld Theatre and in association with Crow's Theatre (Toronto). Winners and Losers premiered at The Gateway Theatre in Richmond and toured to the PuSh Festival in Vancouver, the Brighton Dome Studio Theatre in Brighton, UK, Festival TransAmériques in Montréal, the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa, the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in The Netherlands, Lokal in Reykjavik, Aarhus Festival in Denmark, INTERsection in Terni, Italy, Canadian Stage in Toronto, Intrepid Theatre in Victoria, On the Boards in Seattle, Foreign Affairs Festival in Berlin, Soho Rep in New York, Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC, The Cultch in Vancouver, Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre in Vernon, the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary and the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland.