4th Annual Chicago One-Minute Play Festival at Victory Gardens Set for 5/4-5

Victory Gardens Artistic Director Chay Yew, Managing Director Chis Mannelli and The One-Minute Play Festival Producing Artistic Director Dominic D'Andrea announce the Fourth Annual Chicago One-Minute Play Festival (#1MPF), an evening of one-minute plays by sixty of Chicago's top playwrights, directed by ten Chicago directors. #1MPF will be presented for two performances only, Sunday, May 4 and Monday, May 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park.

Tickets for the Fourth Annual Chicago One-Minute Play Festival, $18, are available at www.victorygardens.org, 773.871.3000. Part of the proceeds will benefit Victory Gardens' community-based programming.

Dominic D'Andrea, Producing Artistic Director and Founder of the #1MPF, along with 60 Chicago playwrights and ten Chicago directors, returns to present these one-minute plays. Following sold-out performances the last three seasons, this year's festival will be an even larger, more inclusive, and more ambitious collaboration between VG and #1MPF. The Festival will showcase Chicago's growing pool of exceptional contemporary writers, including some of the most important artistic voices in the nation, as a means to investigate Chicago's Zeitgeist through a series of moments.

"I'm thrilled to be coming back to Chicago and Victory Gardens," says #1MPF Producing Artistic Director, Dominic D'Andrea. "This festival has always been our largest by number of participants, and it's even bigger this year. The theater has new staff members engaged in the project, and we have tons of new writers and directors this time around. Even though we have four years of history, this feels like a brand new chapter for #1MPF in Chicago. I can't wait to see what this cohort of artists has to say through the work."

One-minute plays by 60 established and emerging local playwrights were commissioned for this special event, prompted by #1MPF's unique playmaking process. This year's festival will feature works by Jon Steinhagen, Reginald Edmond, Patrick McLean, Dana Lynn Formby, Andrew Bailes, Joe Wescott, Reeny Hofrincher, Rachel Claff, EJC "Liz" Calvert, Aaron Weissman, Nick Patricca, Rachel Caris Love, David Cerda, Evan Linder, Tania Richard, Carolyn Krass, Edgar Sanchez, Jenny Seidelman, Danny Bernardo, Mallory Primm, Dani Bryant, Stephen Ptacek, Leean Kim Torske, Scott T. Barsotti, Morgan McNaught, Brooke Allen, Randall Colburn, Joe Zarrow, Calamity West, Bilal Dardai, Isaac Ike Holter, Mark Mason, Alex Lubischer, Kate Healy, Steve Spencer Kimberly D. Furganson, Arlene Malinowski, MT Cozzola, Adam Webster, Caroline Moseley, Tanise Robnett, William Glick, Tony Werner, Tiffani Swalley, Lonnie Carter, Nambi E. Kelley, Zayd Dohrn, Stephen Grush, Emily Schwartz, Jenni Lamb, Axel Arth, Dan Caffrey, Robert Tenges, SL Daniels, Emma Stanton, Skye Robinson Hillis, Jessy Lauren Smith, Fawzia Mirza and Francesca Peppiatt, among others.

Directors are by Anna Bahow, Erica Barnes, Heinrich Haley, Jeffry Stanton, Jo Cattell, Juan F. Villa, Kendra Miller, Lilli Anne Brown, Scott Weinstein and Sydney Chatman.

$11 valet parking is available for all performances except weekday matinees. Metered and street parking is available, but mind the neighborhood parking restrictions.

By CTA train, take the Red, Purple or Brown lines to the Fullerton stop. Walk east on Fullerton to Lincoln, then north 1/2 block to the theater. The #8 Halsted, #11 Lincoln, #37 Sedgwick/Ogden, and #74 Fullerton CTA buses all stop at the corner of Fullerton and Halsted, 1/2 block south of the theater. Please see transitchicago.com for times and routes.

See www.victorygardens.org for a list of Victory Gardens' neighborhood dining partners. Each is within walking distance of the Biograph and all offer a special discount to patrons who present a Victory Gardens ticket stub.

Tickets to the #1MPF are also available as part of the Victory Gardens Membership. Memberships are $15/month (based on a 12-month agreement) and are available year-round. Members are offered admission to almost any performance at Victory Gardens, including all Victory Gardens-produced shows, all Resident Company productions, all Public Programming, and many Visiting Companies (some exclusions apply). Members receive one reserved admission per production and are welcome to return an unlimited number of times on a standby basis. Members may bring a non-member guest with them at a 20% discount for a regular ticket. Members receive discounts with all Victory Gardens restaurant partners and access to exclusive specials at the VG bar.

The One-­Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) is America's largest and longest running short form theatre company in the country, founded by Producing Artistic Director, Dominic D'Andrea . #1MPF is barometer project, which investigates the zeitgeist of different communities through dialogue and consensus building sessions and a performance of many moments. #1MPF works in partnership with theatres sharing playwright or community-specific missions across the country. #1MPF creates locally sourced playwright-focused community events, with the goal of promoting the spirit of radical inclusion by representing local cultures of playwrights of different age, gender, race, cultures, and points of career. The work attempts to reflect the theatrical landscape of local artistic communities by creating a dialogue between the collective conscious and the individual voice.

In each city, #1MPF works with partnering organizations to identify programs or initiatives in each community to support with the proceeds from the work. The goal is to find ways give directly back to the artists in each community. Supported programs have ranged from educational programming, youth poetry projects, teaching artists working in prisons, playwright residencies and memberships, and community arts workshops.

Annual partnerships have been created with theaters in 20 cities including: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Trenton, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, Dallas, Austin, Indianapolis, Anchorage, and more, with partnering institutions like Primary Stages, Victory Gardens Theatre, Cornerstone Theatre Company, The Playwrights Foundation, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Actor's Express, InterAct Theatre, Mixed Blood, Passage Theatre, Phoenix Theatre, Kitchen Dog, Salvage Vanguard, ScriptWorks, ACT, Perseverance Theatre, and others.

Notable #1MPF contributors have included: David Henry Hwang, Neil LaBute, Tina Howe, Donald Margulies, Nilaja Sun, Lydia Diamond, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Kristoffer Diaz, Rajiv Joseph, Sam Hunter, Karen Hartman, José Rivera, Craig Lucas, Mike Daisey, Greg Kotis, Michael John Garcés, & close to 600 famous, emerging, and midcareer playwrights. For more information visit: www.oneminuteplayfestival.com