Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre

In association with Crow’s Theatre

Winners and Losers

James Long and Marcus Youssef. Photo by Simon Hayter 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— Pam Anderson, microwave ovens, their fathers, Goldman Sachs, Mexico, etc.—and debate whether they are winners or losers. As each one seeks to defeat the other, the debate becomes 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 is not, the competition very quickly adds up. Directed by 2013 Siminovitch Prize winner Chris Abraham, Winners and Losers has quickly become an international success.

Written and performed by Marcus Youssef and James Long

Directed by Chris Abraham Lighting by Jonathan Ryder

Stage & Production management by Elia Kirby

PRODUCTION HISTORY

February 2012

April 2012

November 2012

January 2013

May 2013

May 2013

June 2013

August 2013

August 2013

September 2013

September 2013

November 2013

PushOFF Vancouver, BC Scene First, Gateway Theatre Richmond, BC Richmond Gateway Theatre Mainstage Richmond, BC PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Vancouver, BC Brighton Festival Brighton, UK Festival TransAmériques Montreal, QC Magnetic North Festival Ottawa, ON Noorderzon Festival Groningen, NL Aarhus Festival Aarhus, DK Dublin Festival Dublin, IR Es Terni Festival Terni, IT Crow’s Theatre and Canadian Stage Toronto, ON

TECHNICAL RIDER

Please confirm with Producers all technical information on this page. PRODUCER WILL PROVIDE: Performers 2 men Backstage 1 Production Manager/Stage Manager 1 Producer Lighting Plot will be provided. Sound Ipod nano (all playback will be run onstage and by the performer

from an on-stage Ipod) to be run through the house system CD – Audio File, to be run from the tech booth through the house system Costumes Provided by production Props 2 ping pong paddles and balls 2 books 1 piece of chalk 2 bells PRESENTER WILL PROVIDE: Venue W&L requires a bare stage, minimum of 24’ deep (7.3M<) x 32’ wide (9.75M) with a grid at a minimum of 17’ (5.18 M)

It is a requirement of the show that we draw a chalk rectangle on the floor each performance. The floor should be one colour, ideally black or grey, please confirm with Producers prior to signing the contract. Masking Please contact show PM/TD to discuss masking of the venue Sound One on stage mini jack (or adapter) for Ipod Nano to house system, with long cable to reach set table,

! ! !! !

One CD player connected to the house system Area microphones (to be used at the discretion of the producer and presenter in larger venues)

Lighting 26 instruments Capacity to control (dim) house lights from the tech booth The presenter can supply the producer’s PM/TD with an electronic plot of the venue with available lighting instruments and inventory. See below for lighting plot:

Set (1) 7’ x 30” (5.18M X .762 M) wooden trestle table with folding legs

(2) wooden – black or brown chairs

Please provide a photo of the table and chairs a minimum of 4 weeks prior to show’s arrival to confirm table and chairs.

Table with chairs in chalk square -

Costumes Laundry facilities Props Two beer bottles per performance – non-alcoholic beer may only be substituted if zoning or licensing will not allow liquor on stage One clean bar towel backstage to clean up beer if necessary Tech Booth (3) clear com (stage manager to show crew) and one to back stage (1) cue light backstage to signal performers for the start of the show Cleaning Wet mop to wash floor before every show

Back Stage One lockable dressing room with showers and laundry with direct (non-public) access to the back of the stage. We require drinking water back stage. A small bar fridge or tub with ice should be supplied backstage – we drink beer in the performance and it foams up if it’s not cold. Snacks (fresh fruit, nuts, vegetables, etc) are also appreciated. First Aid Two ice packs on standby Basic First Aid kit

TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND PROPOSED SCHEDULE: Winners and Losers can be installed in one day with a performance that evening provided the following is provided at the start of the day and attended to by professional technicians. Lighting call to hang and focus 26 – 30 lighting instruments. The number of the crew required to do this work is up to the discretion of the presenter. Suggested schedule: 9AM – 1PM Hang and circuit lighting 1PM – 2PM Lunch 2PM – 4PM Focus 4PM – 5PM LX programming and audio check 5PM – 6:30PM Spacing rehearsal with performers 8PM Show The presenter is to supply one technician (lighting board operator/programmer) for the duration of all tech rehearsals and performances. Please note that there is one sound cue, and that audio levels will not be changed during the performance. In the event that microphones are required, there will also be no changes to the levels during the performance. Performers require access to the stage or another appropriate space 1 hour prior to house opening for warm up

PUBLICITY RIDER

When presenting Winners and Losers, the Presenter agrees to the following guidelines on all publicly distributed and displayed materials. Companies Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre must receive equal billing, and appear on all materials. Billing may appear as: “Produced by Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre” “Co-Production by Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre” “Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre present” This production is presented “in association with Crow’s Theatre.” No substitution or replacement of this language may be used. Crow’s Theatre must be included in equal or smaller font to Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre. International presenters may wish to list the cities of origin. Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre are from Vancouver, BC. Crow’s Theatre is from Toronto, ON. Artists Marcus Youssef and James Long must receive equal billing, and appear on all materials. When using the press images provided by the producers, both Marcus Youssef and James Long must appear in all photographs. Billing may appear as: “Written and performed by Marcus Youssef and James Long” “Created and performed by Marcus Youssef and James Long” All materials must credit Chris Abraham (Director), and Elia Kirby (Production Manager/Stage Manager) in equal or smaller font size to the performers. Running time Winners and Losers runs 85-90 minutes with no interval.

PREVIEWS AND REVIEWS Winners and Losers: Virtuoso wordplay gives way to nasty verbal sparring in this tour de force

By Paula Citron, the Globe and Mail May 28, 2013 (Festival TransAmériques)

Winners and Losers is written and performed by two towering artists from Vancouver. James Long is co-artistic director of Theatre Replacement, while Marcus Youssef performs the same role at Neworld Theatre. Both are companies with solid international reputations. Oddly, Winners and Losers is Long’s and Youssef’s first collaboration despite being close friends for many years.

To give some context, Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre are left-leaning, sociopolitical provocateurs. Their productions are designed to make disturbing statements about the human condition. Whether exploring the immigrant experience or the banality of social media (the former), or deconstructing questions about power, culture and belonging (the latter), both Long and Youssef strongly believe that theatre must be a true mirror of society.

Winners and Losers fits into the scheme of things because at its heart it examines the issues of competition and, by extension, capitalism, the engines that drive modern Western civilization. The structure is centred on two friends having a lively debate while drinking a bottle of beer. But, this being Long and Youssef, some words are said that cut to the quick, and the audience is sent reeling.

In their program notes, the men point out that the conflict that arises between them is all the more critical because of their shared system of belief. Friends, it seems, can be more cruel than enemies, and this makes for stronger theatre.

They begin as a game, two charismatic actors loving the repartee. One throws out a topic, and each explains why it is a winner or a loser. A topic is laid to rest when one or the other presses a bell. A simple structure, but very effective: a table, two chairs, two bells, with a chalked square on the floor define their boxing ring.

The men’s virtuoso wordplay is a delight. Youssef thinks Montreal’s municipal corruption is a winner because it gets things done. Long puts microwave ovens in the winner column because celebrity chef Jamie Oliver uses them. They ask the audience for a topic and someone shouts out “the Senate!” Long declares it a winner because he wants the job – all that money for doing nothing.

But unsettling questions start to arise in the audience’s mind. Do they really believe in what they are saying, or does one take the opposing view just to play devil’s advocate? And then there’s the reference to Youssef’s privileged background, which ultimately becomes the fuel for a firestorm that grows between them. Slowly but surely, a fun game becomes one-upmanship.

In this game of gotcha. Youssef seems earnest, while Long is sly. Long accuses Youssef of being a “tourist,” meaning his upper middle-class background places him far from the leftist causes he supports. Youssef counters by stating that Long is not a good parent. Nastiness becomes the rule.

The director of Winners and Losers is Chris Abraham, artistic director of Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre, another company whose raison d’être is statement oriented. He provides the physical variety, having the men switch seats, or stand up together reciting facts about themselves, or engaging in a table-tennis match.

One assumes that Abraham also ensured that the show’s suckerpunch had the right build. Keep the audience laughing while you sneak up on them, catching them by surprise with a brutal hit to the solar plexus.

Winners and Losers is heady stuff . Formidable, indeed.

Winners and Losers is one of the best shows of the season By Colin Thomas, Georgia Straight November 26, 2012 (Gateway Theatre)

I don’t want to give too much away, so how can I convince you to go see this one? Because you really should see this one. To maximize your pleasure in discovery, I’m going to have to resort to vague but enthusiastic adjectives. Winners and Losers is one of the most exciting, intelligent—and entertaining—shows you’ll see this season. In it, Marcus Youssef and James Long sit at opposite ends of a long table and divide everything they can think of into winners and losers: farmers’ markets, lululemon, Pamela Anderson, the Occupy movement—and one another. But they don’t just sit at the table. Under Chris Abraham’s direction (Abraham is the artistic director of Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre), the actors use space in ways that are sometimes so casual yet so minimalist that they carry the weight of ritual. They move the table out of the light at one point, for instance, and that action has all the portentous force of a Beethoven chord progression; you just know the gloves are coming off. There’s playfulness in the physicality, too. On opening night, during a competitive game, an audience member started keeping score. Youssef and Long keep finding fresh ways to enrich their debate: they do short, snappy rounds of categorization; they tell extended stories; they let words fall away. Despite the air of improvisation, the evening is, in many ways, beautifully structured: one of the players avoids categorizing a loved one, but that loved one emerges later with damaging force. The two artists seem prepared to talk about virtually anything. I don’t remember the last time I saw a guy talk publicly about his yearning for anal stimulation—other than in a letter to Dan Savage. Complex discussions emerge, especially about the Middle East and left-wing politics. Increasingly, the weighty considerations about race and class accrue; there’s a satisfying sense of increasing depth. Throughout, there’s also a teasing tension. How much of Winners and Losers is scripted and how much are the performers winging it? I asked Youssef about this after the show and he answered me straightforwardly, but I’m not going to tell you what he said because I want you to have the fun of teetering along that tightrope yourself. I will say, though, that the political gets brutally personal. A source close to the artists told me that, during the development phase, Youssef and Long reduced one another to tears as they debated whether they themselves are winners or losers.

That’s ironic because, in the play’s current state, the most personal section, which is also the script’s climactic movement, is its least successful. Repeating its basic points about class, this chunk gets overly explanatory, as if it’s searching for its centre. And, for the first time, the performers feel like they’re faking it, struggling to sustain the sense of spontaneity. I’m sure the final movement will change and grow, though. Because Winners and Losers will get done a lot. Or at least it should. After all, it allows two of the finest experimental artists in Vancouver to engage in a very fine experiment. Guest Review: Winners and Losers at Gateway Theatre

By Jo Ledingham, Laura Murray PR Blog November 26, 2012 (Gateway Theatre)

Jamie Long and Marcus Youssef are good friends. Or so they say. But will they still be friends after Winners and Losers closes? Created by Youssef and Long, this is, hands down, one of the most innovative, interesting and brutal theatre pieces I’ve ever seen. It’s like pulling the wings off a butterfly – or so I imagine. Chris Abraham directs in Gateway’s intimate Studio B, a small black box space that seats 100. There’s a long wooden table at either end of which are two little nickel-plated desk bells that go ‘ding’, two chairs, Jamie and Marcus. That’s it. They draw a chalk rectangle on the floor, enclosing the set and suddenly, Jonathan Ryder illuminates that area and the house lights go down. The game begins. It all starts playfully with a debate about winners and losers: farmers’ markets, Mother Teresa, Marilyn Monroe, Tom Cruise, microwave ovens (“a little Three Mile Island in your kitchen” makes that ubiquitous kitchen appliance a loser), Zapatistas, Mexico, Obama, Harper, Canada. The all-in-good-humour arguments for and against fly back and forth with the little bells dinging to indicate a win. But eventually it all begins to go south. “Do me,” Long challenges. “Winner or loser?” According to director Abraham, it’s about 70-80% scripted with the rest of it being improvised. The order of the debate is fixed and to some extent, so is the game. Does it get personal? Yes. Does it get physical? Yes. So why would two friends do this? Do they just want to air hostilities they harbor but which haven’t, thus far, ruined their friendship? Maybe. More to the point, however, is that they explore the very nature of relationship: what are we prepared to overlook for the sake of friendship. What are the sources of envy that plague us? Money. Physical prowess. Success. And if we risk opening these floodgates to our friends, does the friendship cease or does it deepen? Absolutely fearless, Long and Youssef open themselves up to each other – and to us. What about those $200 jeans? What about that $800,000 home and guaranteed security? As the cuts go deeper and deeper, Long sprawls in what looks like calculated nonchalance: his gangly legs spread, there’s a smile on his face. Youssef crouches in on himself and language begins to fail; “Like” and “Right?” pepper his responses. He begins to look like a loser in a Mamet play. This is a game few of us would have the courage to play. Winners and Losers looks a lot like open-heart surgery. Metaphoric blood is spilled but,

strangely, the experience for the audience is exhilarating. The possibility that friendship can survive – or even be strengthened by – such excruciating honesty is inspirational and opens up floodgates of introspection. Long and Youssef will be amusing and abusing each other nightly (with a couple of matinees) until December 1. They are, they say, friends. And they say they leave it all at the theatre at the end of each show. Really? As Long quipped accusingly after Youssef delivered a particularly stinging attack, “You stayed up all night working on that, didn’t you?” Let’s check back on December 2 after the final curtain falls. Will their friendship be a winner or a loser? Only innovative theatre could give us these winners and losers

By Marsha Lederman, the Globe and Mail January 18, 2013 (PuSh Festival)

For a night out at the theatre – or the library, the SkyTrain station, or wherever the performance happens to be – I’ll take out-of-the-box disaster over tried-and-true any day. I would far rather sit (or stand) through something that tries to innovate and fails than check my watch through something safe and formulaic that succeeds in a ho-hum kind of way. I realize this is a personal preference, but this is why, for me, January is the most exciting time of year for theatre in Vancouver.

The PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is under way, and among this year’s many edgy offerings is Winners and Losers. Created and performed by two senior members of the Vancouver indie theatre scene, James Long and Marcus Youssef, it is most definitely out of the box, certainly not safe, and unquestionably not ho-hum.

How does it work? Mr. Long and Mr. Youssef sit at a table and play a game they made up called Winners and Losers. One will name a topic or subject – say Tom Cruise or Catholicism or Goldman Sachs – and the two will debate whether the person, place or thing is a winner or loser. Some of the subjects are set, but many are improvised, making the show unique each night.

But soon the debate takes a turn. Instead of deciding whether Pamela Anderson is a winner or loser (“I always maintain that Pam’s a winner,” Mr. Long says), the two men – decade-long friends and colleagues – turn the game on themselves.

“Once we kind of exhaust the idea of debating Pam Anderson and microwave ovens, we have to get into each other in order to finish the game to bring it to its natural conclusion,” Mr. Long says. “And that’s when it gets personal.”

As the gloves come off, the intensity increases. The guiding theory behind the game is that you can’t have two winners sitting next to each other; for there to be a winner, the men reason, there has to be a loser.

“We’re very similar in a lot of ways, Marcus and I,” Mr. Long says. “And in order to prove that I’m a loser, in order for him to win, he has to get very mean and cutting and he has to get very deep and honest with me and I have to do the exact same thing with him.”

Mr. Long, 39, is artistic director at Theatre Replacement. Mr. Youssef, 43, is artistic director of Neworld Theatre. Their companies have been involved in some of the most exciting theatre I have seen in my five years in Vancouver – in particular the Hive shows, Neworld’s 2012 adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, and Theatre Replacement’s Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut.

Winners and Losers had its world premiere at Gateway Theatre in Richmond in late 2012. Despite the nightly battles – plus rehearsals – the guys seem to have maintained their friendship, although they’ve had their moments, in particular one show after which followed an awkward silence in their tiny dressing room. As things heated up on stage, there was a look in Mr. Youssef’s eyes that had Mr. Long wondering if maybe he’d gone too far.

“It actually wasn’t the personal stuff that I found the hardest,” Mr. Youssef says. “What I found the hardest was the feeling of the times when we’d be in the middle of something and Jamie would go after me and I’d feel like I was losing; I’d feel exposed as a kind of a fundamental loser. … I think we both got really, really sensitive about the potential for appearing like the loser in the piece.”

The work started out as a more straightforward play: a fictionalized account of two Russian novelists in the Soviet era competing to write the best novel. For a warm-up exercise as they developed the piece at the Russian Hall, Mr. Long and Mr. Youssef made up the winners and losers game – and played it with Russian accents. But when they read through transcripts of the exercise – sans Russian accents – it became apparent that the game itself was a compelling piece of conceptual performance.

If it weren’t for PuSh, an out-there work like this might languish without ever finding its way to the stage. Both men credit the festival with not only opening opportunities (Winners and Losers will tour this year to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal as well as Britain and Ireland) but with creating an environment where this kind of work can be developed, and find an audience.

“I don’t think it’s possible to overestimate the influence the festival has had on the contemporary scene here in Vancouver,” Mr. Youssef says. “It’s influenced the kind of work we see and I know it’s had an impact on the kind of work I make. And it’s created an audience for work that’s more experimental and asks more fundamental questions about the nature of performance.

“The festival, more than any other single cultural entity in the city – at least for the kind of performance we do – has made going to see something that might kind of weird you out a little or might challenge your notions of what performance is, made that feel cool.”

WORDS FROM MARCUS YOUSSEF + JAMES LONG CREATING WINNERS AND LOSERS For us, Winners and Losers emerged out of a desire to investigate how deeply competition is part of everything we do. For better and for worse. And class - about how capitalism and money are defining features of that competition, and how that affects everything, even our closest friendships, whether we like it or not. The immediate inspiration was a friend of ours who got involved in a kind of pyramid scheme that promised money and spiritual satisfaction. Both can be so hard to find - in this culture particularly, we think. It got us thinking about where we are now (late 30's, early 40's) and how maybe especially for men, this is the time when you really start assessing whether you're winning or losing, and sometimes taking desperate measures if you're not sure. We began by making a different play, a more traditional piece about two Russian novelists competing to write the best novel. We also started writing another one, a Kafka-esque thing about two office workers. To warm up we would play the winners and losers game: name a person place or thing and debate whether it's a winner or a loser. We’d also make long lists of various skills or attributes and compete or debate who was better at them (parenting, wrestling, cooking, ping pong, etc). Because we know one always should, we recorded those warm up improvisations and had them transcribed. When we read them, we realized it was way better, more dangerous and closer to what we were after than the two fictional pieces we were working on. The material is all autobiographical. We think it brings to the surface currents that were present in our friendship, but were never explicitly admitted to or spoken about. That's one of the things we like about the piece: it explores competitive questions/dynamics that are present (we believe) in all our relationships, but are rarely acknowledged because it feels dangerous and wrong to acknowledge conflict or difference with people we care about. But is it surprising - given the centrality of competition to our economic and social systems - that we experience it in our personal lives too?" LIVING WITH WINNERS AND LOSERS One of the big questions we are chewing on right now is what long-term effect the show may have on us as performers, as friends and as human beings. The show really bangs around in your head each night after it’s done. Especially if you feel you’ve ‘lost’. In a more conventional piece, having a bad night as a performer might leave you temporarily feeling like a bad actor. That’s a standard neurosis for actor types, and one you learn to brush off pretty quick. A bad night in Winners and Losers leaves you feeling like a bad person – not as easy to brush off. Occasionally that means more detailed check-ins prior to the show, but just as often it means retreating to beef up your arsenal for the next night. If the goal is to win - you win. So what are the long-term effects of this? When, or how often, will someone go too far in the show? What might seem like a quick jab to one person could be a massive upper cut to the other. Is someone being too sensitive? The other an asshole? Then you have daily moods to deal with, the fact we are often missing our families, the ongoing trials of living on the road. When you add to this the fact that the characters you see on stage are so closely linked to Marcus and Jamie in real life, it can sometimes add up to a bit of a mind-fuck. Some of our closest friends/colleagues have expressed serious concern about the show’s impact. Not on our audiences, but on us. We think we’ll be okay. But we’ll have done Winners and Losers about 65 times by January 2014. And we have another 50 or so booked to follow. We’re very curious to see where our heads are at in a year’s time.

MULTIMEDIA

All images, videos, and additional information including press quotes and touring information is available at winnersandlosersontour.wordpress.com/marketingmaterials with the password “yousseflong”

CONTACTS

Kirsty Munro Tour Producer, Neworld Theatre Managing Director kirsty@neworldtheatre.com/+1.604.602.0007 Elia Kirby, Production Manager/Stage Manager eliakirby@gnwshop.ca/+1.604.250.9315 Ruthie Sumiko Tabata, Travel Arrangements Contact, Theatre Replacement Producer ruthie@theatrereplacement.org/+1.604.780.7849 Christine Quintana, Marketing and Publicity Contact, Neworld Theatre Operations Coordinator christine@neworldtheatre.com/+1.604.602.0007