Actors Marcus Youssef and James Long do battle during a heated discussion winners and losers. Their performance, Winners and Losers, plays at University Theatre March 21 and 22.
Staged conversation heats up over Tom Cruise, rainforests, and class privilege
What: Winners and Losers (theatre performance)
When: Friday, March 20 and Saturday, March 21, 8 p.m.
Where: University Theatre ADM026, UBC’s Okanagan campus
Tickets: All shows $20; students/seniors $15. Tickets at the door and UBC Okanagan Bookstore
You’re either a winner or a loser. You can’t be both. That is the premise of Winners and Losers, the 2014-15 finale presentation by UBC Okanagan’s Theatre26 performance company.
The staged conversation of Winners and Losers becomes a heated exchange between two friends. The contest 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 actors, playwrights, 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 received rave reviews by New York media and at the PuSh Festival in Vancouver. The play is written and performed by Youssef and Long; co-produced by Theatre Replacement and Neworld Theatre (Vancouver) in association with Crow’s Theatre (Toronto); and presented by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.
Theatre26 is operated by UBC Okanagan students in Interdisciplinary Performance, who hold work-study positions to run the University Theatre. This year’s performance series is made possible through the support of the Central Okanagan Foundation.
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