Biograph Theatre

Victory Gardens Theater Artistic Director Dennis Zacek has announced the addition of two new playwrights to the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, plus two new play commissions and a December workshop designed to fuel the theater's new play mission.

"I'm thrilled to share fantastic news -  Nilo Cruz, the only Latino ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the most produced Cuban-American playwright in the U.S., and Chicago scribe Joel Drake Johnson, whose plays are regularly audience favorites at Victory Gardens and Steppenwolf Theater, have formally accepted my invitation to join the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble,"  said Zacek.  "Both Joel and Nilo are important new voices in contemporary American theater, and we couldn't be happier to have them officially join the Victory Gardens family."

Said Cruz, "It's a great honor to have an artistic home in Chicago, especially to be part of the Victory Garden Theater, one of the few theaters in this country dedicated to playwrights."  Cruz received the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for Anna in the Tropics, which Victory Gardens introduced to Chicago that same year with a smash hit Midwest premiere that subsequently transferred to the Goodman for an extended run. Victory Gardens also presented the 2005 Chicago debut of Cruz's Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams.  The Midwest premiere of A Park in Our House, Cruz's poetic drama about a family caught in Castro's Cuba in 1970, officially opens tonight and runs through December 9 at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse, as a co-production with Teatro Vista, directed by Zacek. 

Johnson responded "It is an honor being part of the Victory Gardens Theatre commitment to new plays." Well known for creating indelible, outrageously funny, painfully human characters, Johnson's plays walk the line exquisitely between comedy and drama.  His most recent productions at Victory Gardens include Before My Eyes and End of the Tour, and A Blameless Life and Tranquility Woods at Steppenwolf.  His new play Four Places, a dark family comedy directed by Victory Gardens Associate Artistic Director Sandy Shinner, will premiere next spring at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, March 28-May 4, 2008.

The addition of Cruz and Johnson expands the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble from 12 to 14 members, and represents the first additions to the ensemble since its founding in 1996 as a diverse group of writers under the roof of one producing organization. At the time, there were, and still are, many theaters devoted to developing new plays.  But Victory Gardens stands distinctively apart from them in its ensemble structure, an arrangement that helped Victory Gardens receive the 2001 Tony Award for Regional Theatre.

Founding members are Claudia Allen, Dean Corrin, Lonnie Carter, Steve Carter, Gloria Bond Clunie, John Logan, Nicholas Patricca, Douglas Post, James Sherman, Charles Smith, and Jeffrey Sweet.   Each is either a Chicago author, or a writer with deep connections to Chicago and Victory Gardens. All view Victory Gardens as their artistic home, where their work – as varied as the playwrights themselves - receives priority consideration for mainstage production. In fact, since its founding in 1974, Victory Gardens has produced 152 world premiere plays, 67 by ensemble members, affirming the company's record of presenting more world premiere mainstage productions than any other theater in Chicago.

While the ensemble is at the core of production (a minimum of three ensemble plays are typically presented for each six-play season at Victory Gardens), new works by many other local and national playwrights keep a constant flow of original projects on the Gardens' stage. To that end, Zacek also announced today three new play commissions, as well as a workshop production, that will further the company's mission as a breeding ground for new plays.   

Two young writers - Aaron Carter and Laura Jacqmin - are each receiving commissions to develop new plays for consideration by Victory Gardens. Additionally, playwright Merri Beichler will see her new play Real Girls Can't Win!  - a comedy with an all-female cast examining technology, body image and popularity at an unnamed college - receive a professional workshop at Victory Gardens this December, culminating in a staged reading that will be free and open to the public. These commissions and workshop are part of Victory Gardens' New Audiences for New Plays initiative, funded by a Wallace Foundation Excellence Award.

Victory Gardens continues to expand its artistic boundaries under Zacek, who is celebrating his 30th season at the helm of Victory Gardens, the longest tenure of any artistic director in Chicago.   Victory Gardens is now in its second season producing new works for the American stage in its new, state-of-the-art, $11.8 million mainstage in Chicago's historic Biograph Theater, which has expanded the company's artistic flexibility to meet the desires of its playwrights, and enhanced its ability to welcome and honor patrons old and new.  With the opening of the Biograph last fall, Victory Gardens renamed its longtime home at 2257 N. Lincoln the Victory Gardens Greenhouse, which it is keeping for the production of plays, rental productions, rehearsals, administrative offices and the Victory Gardens Training Center.