Victory Gardens Theater Auction

Do you ever come out of a Victory Gardens Theater production with an itch to be on stage yourself? Or do you love to sing in the shower, but wish you had a larger audience? Then bid your way to musical theater stardom at Victory Gardens' 25th Casting Auction, always one of Chicago's most unique benefit fundraisers.

This year, more than 50 starring and supporting roles in the classic musical Annie Get Your Gun will be sold to the highest bidders at Victory Gardens' 25th Casting Auction, Friday, November 17, at the new Victory Gardens Theater at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.  The evening starts at 6 pm with an open bar and sumptuous pre-auction buffet. Admission is $50 ($35 is tax deductible.)  For more information, contact Kate Oczkowski at koczkowski@victorygardens.org

Lawyers, doctors, stay-at-home moms, CEOs, socialites, secretaries and people from all walks of life will bid on lead roles like Frank Butler, Buffalo Bill Cody and, of course, sharpshooter Annie Oakley during the live auction portion of the evening, led by celebrity auctioneer Aaron Freeman. Opening bid for all live auction roles is $500. Supporting, chorus and children's roles are sold via silent auction, with bids starting at $150. No experience - or talent - is necessary, just the appetite to perform and the desire to support Victory Gardens Theater.

After the auction, the winners of each role make up the "cast," and participate in an extensive rehearsal process including professional direction by Victory Gardens Theater Artistic Director Dennis Zacek. Rehearsals lead to two nights of public performances, February 16 and 17, 2007 at the Athenaeum Theater, 2936 N. Southport Avenue.

Annie Get Your Gun, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields, as revised by Peter Stone, is a fun-loving musical, loosely based on the life of legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and her courtship with Frank Butler, lead sharpshooter with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  It was first staged at Broadway's Imperial Theater on May 16, 1946 with Ethel Merman as Annie, opposite Ray Middleton as Frank.

Fast forward to Victory Gardens' 25th Casting Auction, where some of Chicago's most talented musical theater actors will perform the show's favorite musical numbers including "There's No Business Like Show Business," Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," and "Anything You Can Do."

Unique to Victory Gardens, the Casting Auction celebrates the theater and the development of theater artists and theater lovers alike.  Last year's Casting Auction and subsequent public performances of Hello, Dolly! raised nearly $70,000 for the non-profit Victory Gardens, now celebrating its 33rd season as home to more world premiere mainstage productions than any other Chicago theater.

All Casting Auction proceeds benefit Victory Gardens, which kicked off the fall theater season with the grand opening of its beautiful new, state-of-the-art, 299-seat mainstage inside Chicago's newly-renovated Biograph Theater. In addition to its new Biograph mainstage, Victory Gardens is keeping its longtime venue at 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue - now named the Victory Gardens Greenhouse - as a home for resident companies, rental productions, administrative offices and the Victory Gardens Training Center, and the occasional VGT production.