A bold new work from award-winning playwrights James Long and Marcus Youssef
Thirty years from now, three social planners visit Vancouver's Russian Hall, long abandoned due to earthquakes and flooding, with a seemingly straightforward task: repurpose the hall for common use. But the trio soon discover the project won't be an easy fix. An eccentric squatter, armed with a trove of Soviet industrial films on 16 mm stock, has made the damaged hall their home ... and they're not leaving.
James Long and Marcus Youssef's multimedia play Do you mind if I sit here? dares us seriously to consider the possibilities of radical transformation and to imagine a future born from our most important beliefs, fears, and hopes.
Cast of 3 actors of any gender
James Long has been making theatre since 1995. He directs the Theatre Replacement with Maiko Bae Yamamoto. As a freelance actor and director, he has had the pleasure of working with Rumble Productions, Neworld Theatre, Cindy Mochizuki, urban ink, Leaky Heaven Circus, The Chop, The Only Animal, Stan's Cafe, CBC Radio, and Electric Company Theatre, among many others. He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University.
In 2015, Talonbooks published his co-written play Winners and Losers.
Marcus Youssef is based on unceded Coast Salish Territory, a.k.a. Vancouver, Canada. His fifteen or so plays have been produced in multiple languages in scores of theatres 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.
In 2017, Marcus received Canada's most prestigious theatre award, the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, for his body of work as a playwright. He is also the recipient of Berlin's Ikarus Theatre Prize, the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award, the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Floyd S. 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 East Vancouver artist-run production hub Progress Lab 1422 and was the inaugural chair of the City of Vancouver's Arts and Culture Policy Council.
Talon has published his Adrift, Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, Ali and Ali, Jabber, King Arthur's Night and Peter Panties, and Winners and Losers.
He is currently International Artistic Associate at Farnham Maltings in the UK, Playwright in Residence at Tarragon Theatre, and Artistic Associate at Neworld Theatre in Vancouver. Marcus also sits on SCALE, a national arts roundtable formed in partnership with the Climate Emergency Unit of the David Suzuki Foundation, inspired by Seth Klein's remarkable book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.