Victory Gardens Theater

Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago's #1 presenter of new plays for more than 30 years, introduces Chicago to a beautifully written, inspiring new play about a survivor of the 1994 Rwanda massacres with the local premiere of I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given To Me by a Young Lady From Rwanda by Sonja Linden, which runs until March 5, 2006.
 
"Buy, beg or steal a ticket," wrote The Times of London after ...Young Lady From Rwanda debuted in 2003.  Award-winning British playwright Sonja Linden created this inspiring tale of hope and healing by drawing from her own experiences working with Rwandan refugees at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London.
 
Starring in Victory Gardens' Chicago premiere is Yetide Badaki - who attracted raves earlier this season for her break-out performance in Victory Gardens' Wheatley - opposite veteran Chicago actor Lance Baker, in his Victory Gardens debut.  Andrea J. Dymond, director of Victory Gardens' acclaimed premieres of Shoes and Free Man of Color, directs.

Yetide Badaki was born and raised in Nigeria, West Africa and majored in theater with a minor in environmental science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Last August, she completed her M.F.A. in theater at Illinois State University in Bloomington.  She has also appeared in The Story at the Goodman, and The Seagull at Writers' Theatre.   Wheatley was her first show with Victory Gardens, and her first as a member of Actor's Equity.
 
Winner of the Time Out London Critic Choice Award, ...Young Lady From Rwanda charts the relationship between Juliette, a young survivor of the 1994 anti-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, and Simon, a middle-aged writer in modern-day London who seeks to help her write her story.  As Juliette attempts to deal with intense flashbacks, Simon gives her direction, and the two embark on a touching journey where each helps the other by connecting through the written word.  As their relationship unfolds, often comically, Linden poses important questions about life and art, notably, can two people from such different backgrounds ever truly understand each other?  In the end, Juliette learns how self-expression can be a healing therapy to a victim of unspeakable tragedy.  Meanwhile Simon discovers by helping a young writer learn to express herself, his own creative spark might be rekindled.
 
Sonja Linden has had her plays produced in London and in regional theaters in the UK, the United States and Australia.  She has been writer in residence since 1997 at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, where she set up the Write to Life Project, a creative testimonial writing program offering clients of the Foundation the opportunity to discharge their painful experiences of persecution and exile through writing.   Linden's concern to make these voices public led to her founding iceandfire theatre company, of which she is currently the artistic director.

The company was launched in 2003 with the highly successful London premiere of ...Young Lady From Rwanda, which was later adapted for BBC World Service Radio Drama in 2004, and went on a six-week Arts Council funded national tour.  The play received its U.S. premiere at the Missouri Repertory Theatre in April 2005, has since been produced by Milwaukee Rep, Washington's African Continuum Theater and the 6th at Penn Theatre, San Diego, and premiered in Dublin in September 2005.  Linden's second play for iceandfire, Crocodile Seeking Refuge, was also inspired by the writings of five of her clients at the Medical Foundation, with the central story focusing on the real life experiences of a recent refugee from Darfur in Western Sudan.