Marcus Youssef, Artistic Director

Marcus’ plays: Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil, Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings (with Guillermo Verdecchia and Camyar Chai), Everyone (Unmet Obligation), Adrift, 3299: Forms in Order, Peter Panties (with Niall McNeil), Apathy House and A Line in the Sand (with Guillermo Verdecchia), as well as installation performance events for HIVE’s I and II (with Adrienne Wong), and the Vancouver Art Gallery. They have been produced across North America, Australia and Europe, and are published by Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. Awards: Alcan Performing Arts Award, Chalmer’s Canadian Play Award, Seattle Times Footlight Award, Vancouver Sun Critics’ Choice Innovation Award and others. 2011/12 creation projects include co-creating Winners and Losers with James Long, and writing How My Love has Affected You, based on the journals his mother kept through her Alzheimers’ disease (an Arts Club Silver Commission). Marcus also performs. He’s acted for The Belfry Theatre, Green Thumb, the Vancouver Playhouse, PTC, Rumble, Leaky Heaven, Neworld, Pound of Flesh, Pacific Theatre, and CityOpera Vancouver, among others. As a director, Marcus’ 2009 production of Are We There Yet? won 3 Jessie Richardson Awards, including outstanding direction and production. He teaches and lectures across the country, at places like the National Theatre School of Canada, Studio 58, Queen’s, U of A, UBC, as well as with numerous community-based organizations. Marcus is also artistic associate of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

Adrienne Wong, Artistic Producer

Adrienne Wong creates, performs and produces new work for theatre and radio. Projects for Neworld since joining the company in 2004 include commissioning, developing and producing eleven "podplays" (site specific audio plays created for specific geographies in Vancouver); performing in The Idiot; performing in Peter Panties; performing in the cross-national co-production of My Name is Rachel Corrie (with Teesri Duniya Theatre, Montreal); co-creating three pieces for three HIVEs; and performing in the first draft of Adrift on the Nile. Adrienne is an inveterate collaborator, and has worked with Pi Theatre, Electric Company, Caravan Farm Theatre, battery opera, Shakti Dance Collective, Theatre Replacement, Firehall Arts Centre, and Vancouver Moving Theatre among others. Career highlights to date include performing in the former Vancouver Morgue, recording a radio play via satellite with the BBC World Service, facilitating Placebook - an analogue version of Facebook - at the Vancouver Art Gallery's overnight FUSE, devising a miniature play for Box Theatre, co-writing on the Downtown Eastside Community Play, playing Scrabble over the radio (North by Northwest, CBC Radio One), and creating interactive letter-writing projects. Upcoming projects include collaboration with Toronto's Fu-Gen Theatre on The Sex Tape Project, a collection of three audio plays experienced while peeping into a hotel room across the street, and Landline, with Halifax's Secret Theatre, another series of audio plays, but these ones are performed simultaneously in Halifax and Vancouver. Adrienne is a graduate of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts, sits on the board of directors for PTC and plays the ukulele.

Kirsty Munro, Managing Producer

Kirsty Munro moved to Vancouver from Montreal in 2002 and has since worked as a Front of House Manager, grant writer, box office manager, translator and stage manager. Before being enlisted by Neworld, Kirsty spent four years as Operations Coordinator for Rumble Productions. She also took on the role of Assembly Associate Producer for the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival 2008 and was the Industry Series Associate Producer for the Magnetic North Theatre Festival 2008. Kirsty is a graduate of McGill University.

Camyar Chai, Founding Artistic Producer (Obi-Wan Kenobi)

Recent Acting Credits: The Adventures of Ali and Ali (Neworld Theatre), A Christmas Carol (Vancouver Playhouse), Intelligence (television, recurring role), Masters of Science Fiction (television), Everything's Gone Green (Film), Hedda Gabler (Rumble Productions), Zadie's Shoes (Arts Club Theatre),
Recent Directing Credits: Mother Courage And Her Children (UBC), Adrift On The Nile (Neworld Theatre), Bringing It All Back Home, King Richard And His Women (UBC)
Recent Writing Credits: Eljijah's Kite (Opera libretto composed by James Rolfe - premiered at the Manhattan School for Music and and Rideux Hall by invitation of the Governor General), The Adventures of Ali and Ali (with Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef), Asylum of the Universe
Selected Awards: University Graduate Fellowship (Masters Of Fine Arts - Theatre Directing), Ray Michal Award for Most Promising New Director, two Jessie Richardson Awards for writing and a Jessie Richardson Award for Acting (with the ensemble of Western Theatre Conspiracy's Mojo.)

James Fagan Tait

The visionary artist behind The Idiot and Crime and Punishment..., Jimmy is a native of Cornwall, Ontario and trained at Ryerson Theatre School and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he worked as an actor and director for several years.  He also studied theatre at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris where he worked as an actor and director for four years.  He is one of Vancouver's busiest actor/writer/directors, creating, directing, and/or performing in shows for numerous professional and community-based companies, including boca del lupo, Western Gold, the Vancouver Playhouse, the Caravan, Vancouver Moving Theatre, the World AIDS Group, the Electric Company, Runaway Moon, Bard on the Beach and many others.