Victory Garden Theater Announces A Successful Fiscal Year

Artistic Director Dennis Zacek and Executive Director Jan Kallish proudly announce several triumphs of Victory Gardens Theater's 2009-2010 fiscal year, ending June 30, 2010. Among the theater's accomplishments are critically-acclaimed productions of Chad Deity and Year Zero, both of which were developed and produced through the theater's new play initiative, IGNITION. As the company continues its Campaign for Growth, the theater celebrates the recent opening and naming of the Richard Christiansen Theater and continues its thriving Access programs.

VICTORY GARDENS CELEBRATES CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR THE NEW YORK PRODUCTIONS OF
CHAD DEITY AND YEAR ZERO
Kristoffer Diaz's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity opened to stellar reviews at Second Stage Theatre in New York, on Thursday, May 20; the smash hit production is slated to run though June 20, 2010. The New York Times said, "The fights are fixed, and the man-crushing body slams are faked. But the energy that radiates from The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Kristoffer Diaz's crazy-like-a-fox comedy about television wrestling, is the real thing. This delightfully muscular production, which opened Thursday night at the Second Stage Theater, courses with the vital sap of an able-bodied satire enjoying a rollicking love-hate affair with its subject."

Second Stage Theatre is simultaneously producing Michael Golamco's Year Zero, running through June 13, 2010, at Uptown McGinn/Cazale Theatre. The New York Times wrote that Year Zero is, "a tenderly observed play with an appealing cast, fresh nuances and charm." Backstage called the play "iincisive, haunting and hopeful."

Kristoffer Diaz's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Michael Golamco's Year Zero were both born of Victory Gardens bold new play initiative, IGNITION, which develops and produces new works by emerging young playwrights of color. The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity opened at Victory Gardens on October 5, 2009 to unanimous critical acclaim. Diaz's bold exploration of race and politics through the unlikely lens of professional wrestling was named "Best Play of 2009" by the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and Time Out Chicago, and was named a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Golamco's Year Zero, a moving comedic drama about a young generation of Cambodian Americans paving a new future by remembering its past, opened concurrently in Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theatre to critical raves.

On May 19 more than 50 Victory Gardens board members, patrons and friends traveled to New York to see and celebrate The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Second Stage, followed by a post-show party with the cast, playwright Kristoffer Diaz, director Eddie Torres and the entire creative team.

VICTORY GARDENS TO ANNOUNCE 2010 IGNITION FESTIVAL
In mid-June, Victory Gardens will announce the participants of the second annual IGNITION Festival. Victory Gardens received over 150 scripts. Six new plays will be presented in a festival of readings, August 17 - 22, 2010. These plays will be directed by leading artists from Chicago and around the country. Following the readings, two of the plays will be selected for intensive workshops during Victory Gardens 2010/11 season. Victory Gardens will produce one of these final scripts in the 2011/12 season.

IGNITION, one of Victory Gardens most daring new play development projects, was conceived to support the theater's mission of new play development and diversity. In the spring of 2008, 120 writers of color under 40 years of age from around the United States submitted new scripts for the first phase of IGNITION. The top six plays were then selected, workshopped and presented as staged readings in a successful weeklong festival later that same summer.

IGNITION Festival 2010 is supported by lead corporate sponsor, Allstate Insurance Company, and Bill and Orli Staley. For more information call IGNITION Festival Producer Sandy Shinner or Literary Manager Aaron Carter at 773.549.5788.

VICTORY GARDENS CELEBRATES SEVEN TONY NOMINATIONS FOR
VG PLAYWRIGHTS ENSEMBLE MEMBER John Logan'S PLAY RED
Victory Gardens congratulates Founding Playwrights Ensemble member John Logan on the success of his new play Red, which was awarded Outstanding New Broadway Play by the Outer Critics Circle and received seven Tony nominations, including a nomination for Best New Play. Victory Gardens board members, patrons and friends traveled to London last December to attend the play; the group had tea with cast member Alfred Molina as they celebrated John Logan's success.

Red premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London in December 2009 and was recently nominated for the Tony Award for Best New Play. Logan's premieres at Victory Gardens include Music From a Locked Room and Scorched Earth, as well as Never the Sinner and Hauptmann. Logan received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for The Aviator and Gladiator. He won a Golden Globe for Sweeney Todd. Other screenwriting credits include The Last Samurai, Any Given Sunday and RKO 281. Logan is currently writing a new stage adaptation of Moby Dick for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

VICTORY GARDENS CAMPAIGN FOR GROWTH LAUNCHED WITH THE NAMING OF THE RICHARD CHRISTIANSEN THEATER
The naming of the Richard Christiansen Theater is the centerpiece of Victory Gardens Campaign for Growth, a $1 Million campaign that will enable the theater to continue, and expand, its long time commitment to new work, diverse audiences, greater access, and education. Programmatic initiatives such as the hugely successful IGNITION Festival and Fresh Squeezed will continue to flourish on both stages through the funds raised from this campaign.

As part of the Campaign for Growth, a special Artists' Tribute Fund has been created specifically for artists to honor Christiansen's tireless support of Chicago theater. Theater artists who began their careers and those who still call Chicago home have contributed generous lead gifts to the fund and are pledging to match fellow artists' donations dollar for dollar. Supporters of the fund include William L. Petersen, John Logan, John Mahoney, David Mamet and Peter Schneider, among others. Lead support for the Richard Christiansen Theater is generously provided by Polk Bros. Foundation.

VICTORY GARDENS WINS THE INTERNATIONAL HANS Christian Anderson AWARD FOR SNOW QUEEN
On April 2, 2010 in Denmark, Associate Artistic Director Sandy Shinner and Snow Queen cast member and musician Bob Goins accepted the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Prize on behalf of Victory Gardens "for the inventive musical adaptation of The Snow Queen."

Victory Gardens is only the second US winner in the fifteen year history of the prestigious prize, also awarded this year to French author Marc Auchet for his translations of Andersen's work and Danish author Kjeld Hedtoft for his new book on Andersen's significance as a visual artist. The award winners joined the eight member prize committee and many former award recipients to tour Copenhagen and Odense, the city of Andersen's birth.

2009-2010 SUBSCRIPTION SEASON CLOSES WITH Kevin Anderson AND Francis Guinan IN JOEL DRAKE JOHNSON'S A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
Victory Gardens closes its 2009/10 Season with the world premiere of Ensemble Playwright Joel Drake Johnson's A Guide For The Perplexed, marking the Chicago return of award-winning Broadway actor Kevin Anderson. The production, directed by Associate Artistic Director Sandy Shinner, runs July 9 - August 15, 2010 at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park.

Star of stage and screen, Kevin Anderson is a Chicago theater original, perhaps most fondly remembered for his performances in Orphans both at Steppenwolf and on film. In A Guide For The Perplexed, Anderson stars opposite fellow Steppenwolf ensemble member Francis Guinan.

Anderson plays Doug, a newly released petty criminal, forced to take reluctant residence with his sister's husband, their teenage son and a tank of tropical fish. The rehabilitation process, both absurdly funny and heartbreakingly sad, is by no means limited to the ex-con. When Doug's female pen pal arrives in hot pursuit bearing strange gifts, the play cuts deep into the characters' mutual feelings of pain, guilt and fear. Yet hints of a tenuous recovery make Johnson's newest play both hopeful and very real.

VICTORY GARDENS CELEBRATES 16 YEARS OF ACCESS PROJECT
Now in its 16th year, the Victory Gardens Access Project is a nationally recognized model outreach effort designed to involve people with disabilities in all aspects of theater, both on and off the stage. In 2008 Victory Gardens received the MetLife Foundation Award for Excellence and Innovation in Arts Access, and in 2009 we were named Most Accessible Theater by the members of Deaf Illinois.

Victory Gardens Access Project includes: Artist Development Workshops, which teach the art of playwriting and performance to individuals with and without disabilities; Play Development Opportunities for original works dealing with disability issues or written by playwrights who have disabilities; and Crip Slam, a series of performances, readings, movies and other events that promote, explore and celebrate disability culture. Accessible seating, assisted listening devices, audio description and Braille programs are always available.

Upcoming Access performances include:
Jacob and Jack
Audio Description: June 11, 8 pm; June 20, 3 pm
Word for Word Captioning: June 9, 2 pm; June 18, 8 pm; June 19, 5 pm
Sign Language Interpretation: June 18, 8 pm

A Guide For The Perplexed
Audio Description: August 6, 8 pm; August 15, 3 pm
Word for Word Captioning: August 4, 2 pm; August 13, 8 pm; August 14, 5 pm
Sign Language Interpretation: August 13, 8 pm

About Victory Gardens Theater
Under the leadership of Artistic Director Dennis Zacek and Executive Director Jan Kallish, Victory Gardens Theater is home to the bold voices of world premiere theater. The company features the work of its own 14-member Playwrights Ensemble, as well as that of exciting playwrights who are changing theater in the U.S. and abroad. Since its founding in 1974, the company has produced more world premieres than any other Chicago theater, a commitment recognized nationally when Victory Gardens received the 2001 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. The company's dedication to developing, supporting and producing new work makes Victory Gardens an American Center for New Plays.

In 2006, Victory Gardens successfully completed an $11.8 million renovation of Chicago's famed Biograph Theater, and moved two blocks north from its longtime venue at 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue, to its beautiful new home in one of Chicago's most celebrated historic landmarks. Renamed Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, the new venue is a state-of-the-art 299-seat mainstage which has greatly expanded the company's artistic flexibility, while enhancing Victory Gardens' ability to welcome patrons old and new.

Last summer, Victory Gardens completed the second phase of renovation at the Biograph, building an intimate, new, 109-seat studio theater on the second floor. On March 1, 2010, at a special launch event for Victory Gardens new, $1 million "Campaign for Growth," Victory Gardens' new studio was officially named the Richard Christiansen Theater, in honor of the Chicago Tribune chief critic emeritus and longtime champion of Chicago's live theater scene. Visit www.victorygardens.org/campaignforgrowth for more details.

Victory Gardens Theater is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council (IAC), a State Agency, CityArts Program 4 Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. Major funders also include the John T. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Shubert Foundation, Wallace Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, Allstate Insurance Company, Alphawood Foundation, Motorola Foundation, REAM Foundation, Edgerton Foundation, and Crown Family Philanthropies. Additional funding is provided by the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Kraft Foods, Prince Charitable Trusts, Sara Lee Foundation, Seigle Family Foundation, Charles and M.R. Shapiro Foundation, and by 3Arts, Harry S. Black and Allon Fuller Fund, Charles H. and Bertha L. Boothroyd Foundation, Elizabeth Cheney Foundation, John R. Halligan Fund, Illinois Tool Works (ITW), James S. Kemper Foundation, Albert Pick, Jr. Fund, Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, and Wrightwood Neighbors Association.

For complete information, visit www.victorygardens.org.

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