Marcus Youssef

June's global theme is 'WILDERNESS' grateful to be able to feature artistic director, playwright, 
author, performer, and educator Marcus Youssef.

You might know Youssef as a regular contributor of drama, commentary, and documentary to numerous programs on CBC. Or maybe for his many contributions to Vancouver Magazine, Georgia Straight, Rice Paper, or This Magazine. For many years, Youssef has also dedicated himself to numerous community-based advocacy programs that aim at using writing and/or theatre as a tool for procuring political and social change.

Youssef’s fifteen or so plays have been produced in a dozen languages in in twenty countries across North America, Europe and Asia, from Seattle to New York to Reykjavik, London, Venice, Hong Kong, Vienna, Athens, Frankfurt and Berlin. He is the recipient of Canada’s largest theatre award, the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright, as well as Berlin, Germany's Ikarus Prize, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmers' Canadian Play Award, the Seattle Times Footlight award, the Vancouver Critics’ Innovation award (three times) and the Canada Council Staunch-Lynton Award. Marcus co-founded the artist-run production hub Progress Lab 1422 and was the inaugural chair of Vancouver's Arts and Culture Advisory Committee. Marcus teaches regularly at the National Theatre School of Canada and Studio 58, implemented Canada’s first multi-institutional Bachelor of Performing Arts Degree, at Capilano University, and served as an Assistant Professor at Montreal’s Concordia University. He is currently International Artistic Associate at Farnham Maltings in the UK, Playwright in Residence at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, and Artistic Associate at Neworld Theatre in Vancouver, which he led from 2005-2019. Marcus has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and graduated from the National Theatre School about a million years ago.