Victory Gardens Theater Announces Next Step ​​​​​​​in Artistic Director Search Process

Victory Gardens Theater has finalized the search committee for its new artistic director, which includes artists, board members, Playwrights Ensemble alumni, and Victory Gardens community members.

The first priority for the search committee will be to evaluate and engage an equity-trained external search firm to aid in the process, hopefully by no later than September. The committee will begin interviewing candidates shortly thereafter, and finalists will participate in an online public event before the new AD is named. All members of the community will be invited to meet and ask questions of the candidates at this event.

E. Patrick Johnson, Victory Gardens Board Member and co-chair of the search committee, comments, "We are so fortunate to have a wonderfully diverse group of artists, playwrights, directors, staff, board members and community stakeholders on the search committee. The committee's work has begun in earnest and it expects to move to the next stage of vetting search firms to conduct a national search for the next artistic director in the next few weeks."

The search committee includes: E. Patrick Johnson, co-chair, Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University and Victory Gardens Board Member; Sidney Lee, co-chair, Vice President & General Counsel, Golden Country Oriental Foods and Victory Gardens Board Vice President; Fred Bates, (Retired) Corporate Counsel, ITW - Illinois Tool Works Inc. and Victory Gardens Board Member; Raveen Rao, Partner, Guidehouse LLC and Victory Gardens Board Member; Kate Tillotson, Consultant, Artistic Fundraising Group and Victory Gardens Board Vice President; Lili-Anne Brown, acclaimed director, actor, and educator and Victory Gardens Resident Director; Gloria Bond Clunie, award-winning playwright, educator, and director and Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble Alumna; Roxanna Conner, Victory Gardens Acting Managing Director; Henry Godinez, Professor in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University and Resident Artistic Associate at Goodman Theatre; Coya Paz, Artistic Director of Free Street Theater and Associate Professor in The Theatre School at DePaul University; and Andrew Sparks, Community Programs Director at Latinos Progresando, a Victory Gardens Neighborhood Arts Collective-Chicago (NACC) partner.

Victory Gardens will continue to share updates as the search committee proceeds and welcomes any suggestions during the process, which you can submit at: https://victorygardens.org/artistic-director-search-feedback-form/.