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An Open Letter From the Past, Present, and Future Resident Companies of Victory Gardens

To the Victory Gardens Board of Directors:

We, the past, present and future resident companies at Victory Gardens, are writing to express our frustration at the lack of clarity, transparency, and generosity given to Victory Gardens’ Staff and Resident artists. We stand in solidarity with Ken-Matt Martin, the Resident Artists , and staff members of Victory Gardens’ Theatre. We are equally troubled by this board’s lack of leadership, and even more troubled by its pattern of blatant and ongoing disrespect towards Roxanna and Ken-Matt, and the repeated dismissal of the Playwright’s Ensemble and staff.

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Terry Guest and His Magical Negroes Declare Marie Antoinette the Ultimate Karen at the Story Theatre

In a world where women’s rights are under attack, it struck me as peculiar to witness a story about a white woman who in spite of all her wealth and privilege, found time to complain. . . a lot. In a country where 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump, it also struck me as peculiar to witness a story about a white woman who feels paralyzed within the comforts of her gilded patriarchy. Luckily, no one masters the peculiar quite like Terry Guest.

The Story Theatre, in its second season, has mounted a theatrical feast with Marie Antoinette and The Magical Negroes. Written and directed by resident playwright Terry Guest, the play chronicles the life and eventual demise of the last queen of France. The production features an ensemble of mostly black actors (sans the two who play Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI) and begins with the façade of a boarded up storefront with the words “This is not history” written broadly across the wall. While this image alludes to days of civil unrest past and present, it functions mainly as an omen that Guest will not be exploring history verbatim, but expanding upon the ripples that provoke the waves of change throughout history. Though much of the action of the play takes place in France from 1774 to 1793, it wouldn’t be a Terry Guest production without transcending time and space. Marie Antoinette explores the continuum of political resistance by taking us to New Orleans, Haiti, Chicago, and even Texas; anywhere where violence and resistance have mingled to create radical change.

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Victory Gardens Staff Statement of Solidarity Reportedly Removed by Board

The remaining nine members on staff at Victory Gardens Theater released a statement today in solidarity with the Resident Directors and Playwrights Ensemble that resigned early this morning. It reads in part:

“The board repeatedly ignores the advice and concerns of the arts professionals on staff. As staff members, we have been told to channel all communication through Artistic Director Ken-Matt Martin, and Acting Managing Director Roxanna Connor – but the board has repeatedly undermined and dismissed them. The board hired Ken-Matt and Roxanna to lead this organization yet they have never truly been allowed to do so.”

Since then, an anonymous source with knowledge of the situation has confirmed that the Victory Gardens board has gained access to the social media accounts for the company. The board has removed the post and blocked staff members from accessing the social media accounts. The marketing manager has also reportedly been removed from their staff google account, drive and email. Continue reading “Victory Gardens Staff Statement of Solidarity Reportedly Removed by Board”

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Victory Gardens Theater Resident Artists Resign, Call for Board Resignation

The Resident Directors and Playwrights’ Ensemble of Victory Gardens Theater have resigned en masse as of today, July 6, 2022. Executive Director Roxanna Connor will resign effective end of July. Artistic Director Ken-Matt Martin has been placed “on leave” with no public explanation. The resident directors and Playwrights ensemble were not given notice of the resignation or the leave. They also were not informed that the Board of Victory Gardens has purchased a building near the theatre, and were aiming to move the administrative offices without consent of the leadership or staff.  You can read the full letter and see the signatories here.

If you’ve been an artist or a fan of the Chicago Theatre scene, that probably gave you déjà vu. On May 22, 2020, the Playwrights Ensemble resigned in protest of Erica Daniels’ appointment as Executive Artistic Director (formerly associated with Profiles Theatre and Second City). This protest peaked when Victory Gardens infamously boarded its doors and windows and failed to support Black lives during the George Floyd protests. Continue reading “Victory Gardens Theater Resident Artists Resign, Call for Board Resignation”

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‘The Secretaries’ at First Floor Theater is a Subversive Farce about “Hiller”‘s Nazi Germany

Written by Chicago playwright and actor Omer Abbas Salem, The Secretaries is a funny and subversive farce set in a parallel universe’s Nazi Germany. Salem (he/they) is a well known Chicago actor and one of our city’s most exciting emerging playwrights. While The Secretaires is their first true in-person production, Salem’s work has been developed at the Goodman, Jackalope, Steppenwolf, National Queer Theater, and The New Coordinates.

The theatre canon is filled with stories about the Holocaust and, from Cabaret to Sound of Music, big musical numbers about mass genocide. Salem’s script, with its creative alterations to history, offers audiences something new and provocative. This play’s four dynamic characters, outfitted in Aryan Drag, struggle through their time employed as Secretaries at “Hiller’s Office of Mysteries.” Yes, Hiller, not Hitler.

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‘In Every Generation’ at Victory Gardens and the Continuum of Jewish Trauma

While I knew to some degree that In Every Generation would be covering topics of Jewish oppression and trauma, I didn’t anticipate that it would poke and prod at me in such a genuinely unsettling way. In the opening scene, the youngest member of the family is made to sing the usually-sung-by-children Four Questions song despite being a full adult, an awkward moment made doubly so when she forgets the words. As a former Passover baby myself I was able to mouth along perfectly, barely restraining myself from shouting “It’s ‘Anu matbillin!’” when the character messed up — and from that point forward, I was inextricably drawn in.

In Every Generation at Victory Gardens Theatre is defined by this discomfort; that first awkward moment kicks off a harrowing fictional Passover seder where the Levi-Katz family is made to confront their myriad dysfunctions in such a way that leads both the family and the audience to consider fundamental questions about Jewish identity. While the show succeeds tremendously as a moving family drama that examines both the deeply personal and the urgently political, I found myself off-put by some of its philosophical conclusions. Perhaps that is the point.

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A Joyfully Genderqueer Romp in ‘Once Upon a Mattress’ at Theo Ubique

Once Upon a Mattress is a 1959 musical comedy that presents a goofy reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” It tells the love story between the adorably awkward (and misleadingly named) Prince Dauntless and the bombastic Princess Winnifred (or Fred to her friends), buoyed by a supporting cast of royals, nobles, and courtiers embroiled in various scandals, japes, and shenanigans. Being a comedy from the 50’s that covers topics of love and marriage, it’s no surprise that Once Upon a Mattress leans heavily on some outdated and reductive gender roles for its laughs. The smart way around this, which director Landree Fleming has employed to hilarious effect, is to lampoon and subvert those roles at every turn — primarily by showcasing a cast that is visibly and joyfully trans, non-binary, and queer.

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Rivendell Theatre Returns With the Harrowing and Haunting World Premiere of ‘Spay’

In the Appalachian town of Williamson, West Virginia, jobs are scarce and opioids are plentiful. Spay, a new play by Madison Fiedler, focuses on one Williamson family’s struggle with addiction at the height of the opioid epidemic. Sisters Harper and Noah Attridge, played by Krystel McNeil and Rae Gray respectively, are together again under the same roof after Noah’s public overdose at a youth baseball game. Over the course of one sober and sobering week, temptations come knocking at the door with the promise of relief. But at what cost? Rivendell Theatre’s world premiere production, directed by Georgette Verdin, is the promising introduction of a stellar script that deserves consideration from any theatre company currently planning their next season.

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Drive-In To The End of The World: Preston Choi, Marti Lyons, and Regina Victor in Conversation

Preston Choi’s Drive-In To the End of the World will have a public showing presented by Sideshow Theatre Company in residence at Victory Gardens on March 25th. Directed by Sideshow Theatre Artistic Associate and Remy Bumppo Artistic Director Marti Lyons, the play is the culmination of a Sideshow Freshness Initiative that evolved into a customized residency for Choi. Dramaturg and Artistic Director of Sideshow Regina Victor interviews them on the process thus far, and the myths from history, and about ourselves, that drive the play.

Regina Victor: A digital residency is a new experience for all playwrights right now. A truly meta part of this residency is that actors, director and dramaturg will be realizing your play, but you will be in rehearsal digitally. A main theme in Drive-in is the impact on connectivity over great distances, whether they’re mental, spiritual or physical. What do you hope to learn from digitally engaging in the physical space with your collaborators? 

Preston Choi: I think it’s an interesting test of the play, what does your script offer up without your physical presence, where does the language inherently help guide the room into how it might want to be played without you whispering into the director’s or dramaturg’s ear to steer on your behalf. Obviously there are different kinds of development where one can be in active conversation throughout the process, which have been very productive and enjoyable, but I am also interested in forcing myself to tinker with the text exclusively, almost like configuring a rube goldberg machine and setting it off, and not being able to stop it even if it goes off course, but seeing it through to the end to see just how off the rails it gets, or if it makes its way back on course, or if it goes into a unexpected but exciting direction. Being a digital presence makes that a far more achievable and practical method of testing, or rather observing, at least for how my life is functioning at the moment.

RV: Marti, can you tell us what it was like to evolve from a facilitator for the play into its director? What it was like to build this play with Preston through this digital process, inside of this non-traditional structure?  

Marti Lyons: It was super exciting to be part of a playwright-led exploration and to get to work with Regina as dramaturg, and Preston as playwright. Regina and Sideshow, y’alls way of finding out how to support the project and the process in a way that doesn’t necessarily fit a formula. So figuring out what does this play, this playwright really need, and letting that dictate the steps instead of some predictable metric. I was also super excited to be asked to direct because I think Preston’s play is amazing and I really dig Preston’s voice as a writer. So to move from one role to another I felt really informed about the initial work on the process, and also excited to be engaged in a more direct way. The digital process affords us a lot of opportunity for continued development over a longer period of time, and I really appreciate that. Certainly there are also challenges within that structure but I think it’s really helpful for long term collaborations, and that is something that is not always possible otherwise so I’m grateful for that.

RV: And Preston, how has the play grown during this residency? Or, What is a discovery about the piece that really excited you?

PC: I think the play has grown, and in a large way my understanding of it and how much I still have yet to understand with every new bit we gain, the breadth of what it’s touching on is never fully in grasp, but in a fun way. From icon/brand commercialism, late stage capitalism, social media personalities, and expanding the list of cryptids and mythologies, so much has come into the mix since it’s initial inception. The play itself feels like a tip of an iceberg above the water, and everything that informs it, all of the conversations over google meet and zoom, and verbatim notes written in notebooks, have just grown, in a way that is wholly invisible to anyone outside the process, and I hope to get more and more of it above water over time. It’s definitely gotten more grounded, to support some of the fantastical leaps, and playing more with genre, and when genre falls apart or decays into another genre.

RV: Marti, what excites you the most about the play, and Preston’s work? 

ML: I think Preston’s work has an element of danger but is also very funny, and lives in that sweet spot where comedy and horror overlap, which is in tension building into moments that are funny or gasp-worthy, or scream-worthy. That is really thrilling to be a part of, and also really joyful and invigorating to develop.

RV: So Preston, If you had advice for artistic directors trying to create Playwright centered development what would you tell them?

PC: I think there’s a balance between flexibility and rigidity, finding the blend of both that works for the playwright and the team/organization. The adaptability to adjust with whoever is being collaborated with. Having it be not so formless where things feel intangible and nothing nailed down but also not so controlled where things feel like one is being processed on a factory line. I also think reaching out to check on the play and the playwright when things are going great and when things feel like pulling teeth, that consistency of taking a moment to catch up and connect can be really reassuring, especially when it’s over an extended amount of time.

RV: From my perspective, one of the play’s engines is mythology and the ways we contextualize and create our fears. So I have to ask: what is your favorite scary legend or story, in any medium?

PC: I think one urban legend that I find fascinating, that originates from Korea, is “fan death”. If you sleep in an enclosed room, windows shut, doors closed, having an electric fan on could kill you in your sleep, suffocating you. Very human versus technology, but in such a mundane way, not falling from the ceiling and slicing your head off, or one close to your face blowing a fuse, catching fire and burning you, it’s just sitting there slowly depriving you of breath. I’m a big fan of fans, especially when trying to fall asleep, so I’m very grateful to not yet be a victim to this myth.

ML: Certainly one of my favorite scary stories is the girl with the ribbon around her neck, where when the ribbon is removed her head falls off.. Ugh such a good one.

RV: Finally Marti, why should folks come see this reading?

ML: Folks should come see this reading because Sideshow is on the cutting edge of whatever is next for this industry. I think Sideshow is a company of innovation, and vision. Preston’s work is exhilarating, playful, captivating and off-kilter, and requires heightened tone and style, and all the juicy things that as an artist you want to sink your teeth into, and as an audience member you get to lean in and enjoy. I just think Sideshow makes the kind of storefront that you can’t wait to see what y’all are gonna do next. Preston’s work certainly fits that M.O. You will be on the edge of your seat with laughter, it thrills. 

 

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‘The Fifth World’ at Teatro Vista is a Captivating Audio Horror Adventure

Ever since the smash hit true crime podcast Serial aired in 2014 and catapulted the medium into the national spotlight, many audio storytellers have taken that formula — that is, a plucky reporter from out of town comes in to try and solve a highly personal mystery — and tried to fictionalize it with, in my opinion, limited success. Podcasts like TANIS, The Message, and Limetown tend to run up against the issue that the truly appealing thing about Serial was how off-the-cuff it felt, consisting as it did of Sarah Koenig talking to real people about real things. The obviously staged feeling of most fiction podcasts works against that tone a great deal. So how do you create a story that works in this formula?

Well, if you are triple-threat playwright, lead actor, and co-director Gabriel Ruiz in The Fifth World at Teatro Vista, the answer seems to be that you lean as hard away from realism as possible, embracing the limitless possibilities of audio to create something otherworldly, strange, and transcendent.

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