Winner and Losers

by Marcus Youssef and James Long

In many ways Winners and Losers is like a regular play. It has two characters and the majority of its text is scripted. But in other ways it is not. The show is built on a real relationship, and the characters are derived from our real personalities. Twenty percent of the text is impossible to “write” because it is improvised and entirely different from performance to performance. We also regularly alter the phrasing and improvise minimally in the scripted sections. In the stage directions we have noted a few key moments in the text during which our acting choices or improvisations within scripted text can change depending on each performer’s assessment of that evening’s particular performance.

So a question might be – how would other people (students, practitioners, interested others) engage with this highly personal text? At the moment we see three ways people reading or studying this book might attempt to do that:

1. Treat this text like a regular script, in which two actors play Jamie and Marcus. You would then need to make a decision about whether or not to use improvisations in the scripted sections we have written. The choice might depend on the two performers you are working with and their skill at improvising. We think the script will work either way. You will also need to update or alter several subject references to ensure they stay current; for example, this version of the script includes references to ISIS and Charlie Hebdo, which were added for our New York performances. Earlier versions of the play referred to the Arab Spring, Iran in ’79, Air Malaysia, the Euro Crisis, and so on. Approaching the text this way also probably necessitates casting an actor who looks in some way Middle Eastern to play Marcus, and a Caucasian actor to play Jamie. It may also be possible to cast two actors with a different, but substantive, racial difference and then alter the text slightly to reflect whatever that difference might be. While race isn’t an overt issue in the piece, we feel it is an essential component of the transaction that takes place between the two characters.

2. Play the game as an exercise in and of itself. We have done so in various workshop situations – from a three-hour workshop in a theatre to a post-show game in a bar. We play two basic games: (1) Name a person, place, or thing, and debate whether it’s a winner or a loser. When leading the game, one of the techniques we’ve used is to suggest that participants think of the subjects in the following three categories: (a) benign, (b) personal, and (c) topical or controversial. (2) Pick a skill or aspect of human experience and debate who’s better at it (for example, the better parent, better cook, better lover, and so on). There are many contexts in which this might be interesting to try: (a) students in theatre or acting classes; (b) groups of people who’ve gathered around a particular issue or question. We’ve found that it can be a helpful way to focus debate around a social or political issue. Please contact us through the publisher if you want more information.

3. Use this text as a guide in developing a new show that is built on the frame or structure of this one. This would involve, we imagine, employing the methodology we invented to create this show. Briefly, that is: playing the two games (above), and recording and transcribing them, choosing which to include, and ordering and editing them into a structured text that has a kind of unfolding arc or shape. People interested in doing this should contact us, and we can provide more detail.

One thing: if you decide to construct your own show out of the game, we still want you to contact us and talk to us about it. All productions require us to be credited and any productions mounted by professional artists will be subject to some kind of royalty that we will discuss.