Q&A: Winners and Losers

James Long and Marcus Youssef in Winners and Losers.

After touring in Montreal, Ottawa and Europe, Vancouver-based theatre artists James Long and Marcus Youssef are staging their hit show Winners and Losers at the Berkeley Street Theatre in new production presented by Crow's Theatre in association with Canadian Stage. Directed by Chris Abraham, this intense two-hander follows the pair as they play a game in which they name things and people and debate whether, from their perspective, these things are winners or losers—with unanticipated results, of course.

Here, we chat with the deliberative duo about the cost of coming out on top.

Theatromania: Tell us about Winners and Losers. What inspired this show?

JL & MY: 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 30s, early 40s) 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.

Theatromania: What can audiences expect from this performance?

JL & MY: 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?

Theatromania: How do you define a winner/loser?

JL & MY: Impossible and utterly dependent on the context. Stephen Harper can be deemed a winner based on his capacity to win at all costs. He could also be deemed a loser for his silencing of science. Then again he has been great with the budget… but at the cost of many a social program. The show dances around these malleable and often impulsive criteria which become even looser and complicated as we delve into the personal.

Theatromania: Biggest loser in the news today?

JL & MY: Dead heat between your lovely mayor and the Philippines…. and for totally different criteria.

Theatromania: Have you learned anything new or significant from this experience?

JL & MY: 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 the end of this Toronto run. And we have many more to follow. We’re very curious to see where our heads are at in a year’s time.

Catch James and Marcus in Winners and Losers until December 8 at the Berkeley Street Theatre. Visit canadianstage.com for more information and to buy tickets.