The In-Between

Lily has always felt in-between. She looks Vietnamese but thinks of herself as white - her parents adopted her from an orphanage in Vietnam. Her parents both have good jobs, but her best friend Brit is always super broke. When Karim - a guy she’s liked for a long time - shows interest in her for the first time, Brit starts to hang out with some grade-twelves who wear T-shirts saying ＂white pride.＂ After Karim confronts Brit about her racism, a series of fear-induced misunderstandings lead to a lockdown, and Lily finds herself truly in-between, forced to make seemingly impossible choices about whose side she’s on, and which friend she’s going to believe. Set in a school facing the real-life challenges of immigration, income inequality, and fears of violence, The In-Between is a realistic, complex, and believable exploration of the conflicts students navigate in contemporary schools. Like Youssef’s international hit Jabber, seen by hundreds of thousands of young people across North America and Europe and winner of Berlin’s Ikarus Prize, The In-Between brings humour, sensitivity, and a deftly authentic ear to the adult-sized questions all young people must begin to confront as they enter their later teens.

Marcus Youssef is one of Canada’s best-known contemporary playwrights. His plays have been produced in dozens of theatres in fifteen countries across North America, Europe, and Asia, from Seattle to New York to Reykjavik, London, Hong Kong, and Berlin. He is the recipient of Canada’s largest cultural prize, the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, as well as the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Vancouver Mayor’s 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 for Artistic Achievement. Over the years Marcus has also written for a half-dozen shows on CBC Radio and Television and a wide variety of Canadian print and web-based publications, with bylines in the Georgia Straight, Vancouver Magazine, This Magazine, Rice Paper, the Tyee, Vanopolis, and Canadian Theatre Review, among others. Marcus is artistic director of Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre and co-founder of the East Vancouver-based, artist-run production studio PL1422. He was the inaugural chair of the city of Vancouver’s Arts and Culture Policy Council, a Canadian Fellow to the International Society for Performing Arts, and co-chair of the Vancouver political party The Coalition of Progressive Electors. He is currently an editorial advisor to Canadian Theatre Review and a consulting advisor for the National Arts Centre English Theatre. He teaches regularly at the National Theatre School of Canada, Studio 58 Langara College, and the University of British Columbia. See: marcusyoussef.com / neworldtheatre.com / @marcusyoussef.