IGNITION: Emerging Playwrights of Color festival Continues

IGNITION: Emerging Playwrights of Color Festival

As part of Victory Gardens Theater's IGNITION: Emerging Playwrights of Color festival, Victory Gardens' Fresh Squeezed series will throw open the doors of Chicago's historic Biograph Theater for SparkPlug, a post-reading party showcasing local emerging artists of color.

SparkPlug - Friday, August 8th at 9:30 pm at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue - will boast appearances by Chicago's premiere storytellers from 2nd Story; live painting by Pablo Perea of Havana Gallery; Instant Theater, a project of Chicago Dramatists; the magic of Benjamin Barnes; a print your own T-shirt station hosted by Modati; and a delicious spread courtesy of Sugarplum Catering.

SparkPlug will start after the 7:30 pm staged reading of Michael Lew's new play A Better Babylon, one of the six winning plays of Victory Gardens' first-ever festival showcasing emerging playwrights of color from around the U.S. A Better Babylon is set in 1960s UC Berkeley, where a wave of student radicalism engulfs a young Chinese couple, a black protester, and a Chicana biologist. Personal dreams collide with political conscience, testing the limits of mentorship, friendship, and love. Andrea J. Dymond, Resident Director at Victory Gardens, will direct.  The cast includes Charin Alvarez, Allan Aquino, Kevin Hope and Jennifer Shin.

Tickets to SparkPlugare only $5. Tickets to A Better Babylon are an additional $5. An IGNITION Festival Pass, offering entry to every reading and special event, is only $20. For tickets, information, and the complete IGNITION schedule of events, call the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater box office, 773.871.3000, or purchase tickets online at http://www.victorygardens.org/ignition

A summer festival launched by a grant from the Ford Foundation, IGNITION has a dual goal: to introduce exceptional new writers under the age of 40 to Victory Gardens and to jump start future productions of the winning plays around the country. The six plays were selected out of 120 submissions from throughout the U.S. and internationally.

The other winning plays debuting at IGNITION, and their performance times, are:

The Imagine Man by Christopher De Paola (Chicago)
Directed by Henry Godinez
Thursday August 7th, 7:30p
The Imagine Man will be preceded by a keynote address by acclaimed
playwright OyamO, Associated Professor of Theater, University of Michigan.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz (New York)
Directed by Ricky J. Martinez
Saturday August 9th, 3:00p

Bathing Van Gogh by Brian Tucker (New York)
Directed by Derrick Sanders
Saturday August 9th, 7:30p

Year Zero  by Michael Golamco (Los Angeles)
Directed by Ilesa Duncan
Sunday August 10th, 12:00p

Fati's Last Dance
by France-Luce Benson (Pittsburgh)
Directed by Diane Rodriguez
Sunday August 10th, 3:00p

Following the festival weekend, two of the plays will be selected for intensive workshops during Victory Gardens' 2008-2009 season.

IGNITION: Emerging Playwrights of Color was launched by a grant from the Ford Foundation, with additional support from the Joyce Foundation and the Wallace Foundation.

For more information, go to http://www.victorygardens.org/ignition, or call the Victory Gardens box office, 773.871.3000.

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