Sandra Oh and Andre De Shields Among Lineup for Victory Gardens' 2015 IGNITION Festival, Beginning Today

Victory Gardens Theater recently announced the cast of its 2015 IGNITION Festival of New Plays, including GREY'S ANATOMY star Sandra Oh and Broadway legend André De Shields.

Also in the company are Anjali Bhimani, Ramon Camin, McKenzie Chinn, Chris Chmelik, Jen Coombs, Tiffany Cox, Shanesia Davis, Amanda Drinkall, Minita Gandhi, Ricardo Gutierrez, Derek Hasenstab, Shane Kenyon, Kimberly Lawson, Eric Lynch, Donica Lynn, Tony Mhoon, Doug Peck, Adam Poss, Marvin Quijada, Robert Reddrick, Alec Silver, Alfred Wilson, Jacqueline Williams, and Mary Williamson.

"While the playwrights are at the forefront of our IGNITION Festival of New Plays, it is with great excitement that we welcome back long-time collaborator and friend Sandra Oh to join some of Chicago's finest actors on our stage this summer," notes Victory Gardens Artistic Director Chay Yew.

INGITION's seven selected plays will be presented in a festival of readings scheduled for July 16-19, 2015 and will be directed by leading artists from Chicago. Following the readings, two of the plays may be selected for intensive workshops during Victory Gardens' 2015-16 season, and Victory Gardens may produce one of these final scripts in an upcoming season.

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COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINEUP:

Confessions of a P.I.M.P.

Written and Performed by André De Shields

Directed by Samuel G. Roberson

Musical Direction by Doug Peck

Featuring Kimberly Lawson, Donica Lynn, Tony Mhoon, Doug Peck, Robert Reddrick

TONIGHT, July 16, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

IGNITION Opening Night Party following the performance

From the heat of urban insurrection in Baltimore, Maryland to the incandescent glare of New York's Great White Way, "Jelly Belly" has many stories to tell. Through song, dance, and spoken word, join Victory Gardens Theater's Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellow André De Shields in this riveting solo-performance as we follow this adventure from inner city impoverishment to self-actualization.

Queen

by Madhuri Shekar

Directed by Associate Artistic Producer Joanie Schultz

Featuring Anjali Bhimani, Amanda Drinkall, Derek Hasenstab, Adam Poss

Friday, July 17, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

Artistic Meet and Greet & Ice Cream Social following the performance

Sanam Shah, a mathematician, and Ariel Spiegel, a biologist, are PhD candidates and best friends working together to discover the cause of the urgent crisis where bees are disappearing around the world. Just as they are about to publish a career-defining new paper on the subject, Sanam realizes the numbers don't add up. Should she look the other way, or should she stand by her principles? What will she lose?

Slay & Eat

By A. Zell Williams

Directed by Henry Wishcamper

Featuring Jen Coombs, Tiffany Cox, Shanesia Davis, Eric Lynch, Jacqueline Williams, Alfred Wilson

Saturday, July 18, 2015 | 3:00 p.m.

A powerful black politician on Chicago's South Side struggles to pull her family together amidst her husband's failing business, her daughter's drug use, and her brother's relationship with a white dominatrix. Will she survive a scandal or go down in history as an ex-girlfriend of President Obama?

The Last Book of Homer

By José Rivera

Directed by Jonathan Berry

Featuring Ramon Camin, Ricardo Gutierrez, Marvin Quijada

Saturday, July 18, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

Cocktail Hour & Hang Out following the performance

Numb Nuts is a screenwriter who gets kidnapped by a drug cartel while shooting a movie in Mexico about the Trojan War. Battling their bad knees, beer bellies, cataracts, bad hearing, and bitter divisions of the past, his four brothers - ex-military guys nicknamed God, Buddha, Weasel, and Joseph Smith - come to Mexico for the rescue.

Muthaland

Written and Performed by Minita Gandhi

Directed by Heidi Stillman

Sunday, July 19, 2015 | 12:30 p.m.

The life of a young Indian-American woman is forever changed when, on a retreat to her homeland, she unearths family secrets, encounters a prophet, and ultimately discovers her own voice. The Familiar and the Foreign swap roles in this dark comedy about culture, identity, spirituality, and sexuality.

Office Hour

By Julia Cho

Directed by Artistic Director Chay Yew

Featuring McKenzie Chinn, Shane Kenyon, Sandra Oh, Alec Silver

Sunday, July 19, 2015 | 3:00 p.m.

Gina, an adjunct writing professor, meets with a troubled student whose violent writings have disrupted her class. Other professors worry he's a ticking time bomb -- "a classic shooter." Gina isn't so sure. But where is the line drawn between troubled and dangerous?

Sadie River's Drag Ball on the Lawn

By Basil Kreimendahl

Directed by Bonnie Metzgar

Featuring Mary Williamson, Chris Chmelik, full cast to be announced

Sunday, July 19, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

IGNITION Closing Night Celebration following the performance

Sadie River, Mother to The House of River, teaches her unconventional drag family a new performance that she believes will change their lives. Rather than schooling them on gender performance, she attempts to educate her working-poor family in the art of passing as upper-class.

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The IGNITION Festival of New Plays is an annual festival devoted to fostering a community of support for the development of outstanding new plays and nurturing relationships with emerging playwrights. Launched in 2008 with support from the Ford Foundation, IGNITION was designtaylored at that time to be a biennial festival focused on identifying emerging playwrights of color. Over the course of the festival, it has grown to become an annual festival that focuses on identifying exceptional emerging playwrights of any background who speak to contemporary ethnic, social, religious, generational and economic diversity. Since 2008, several plays were first discovered at Ignition and subsequently produced on the mainstage during a Victory Gardens season (...Chad Diety, Year Zero, We Are Proud to Present..., Appropriate, Samsara, Cocked, and Hillary and Clinton.)

All readings will be free and open to the public, and each play's dramaturg will facilitate a post-show discussion to gauge audience responses to the work with a facilitator.

The IGNITION Festival of New Plays receives major support from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, The William and Orli Staley Foundation, and Southwest Airlines, Victory Gardens' official travel sponsor.

Performances are at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, in the heart of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Admission to all festival readings and events is free, though an RSVP is required. For more information or to RSVP, visit www.victorygardens.org/ignition/ or call the Victory Gardens Box Office at 773.871.3000.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Chay Yew and Managing Director Christopher Mannelli, Victory Gardens is dedicated to artistic excellence while creating a vital, contemporary American Theater that is accessible and relevant to all people through productions of challenging new plays and musicals. With Victory Gardens' first new Artistic Director in 34 years, the company remains committed to the development, production and support of new plays that has been the mission of the theater since its founding, continuing the vision set forth by Dennis Zacek, Marcelle McVay, and the original founders of Victory Gardens Theater.

Victory Gardens Theater is a leader in developing and producing new theater work and cultivating an inclusive Chicago theater community. Victory Gardens' core strengths are nurturing and producing dynamic and inspiring new plays, reflecting the diversity of our city's and nation's culture through engaging diverse communities, and in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, bringing art and culture to our city's active student population.

Since its founding in 1974, the company has produced more world premieres than any other Chicago theater, a commitment recognized nationally when Victory Gardens received the 2001 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, Victory Gardens Biograph Theater includes the Zacek-McVay Theater, a state-of-the-art 259-seat mainstage, and the 109-seat studio theater on the second floor, named the Richard Christiansen Theater.

In 2012, Victory Gardens Victory Gardens appointed new Ensemble Playwrights Philip Dawkins, Marcus Gardley, Samuel D. Hunter and Tanya Saracho, for seven-year residencies. The Playwrights Ensemble Alumni includes Claudia Allen, Lonnie Carter, Steve Carter, Gloria Bond Clunie, Dean Corrin, Nilo Cruz, Joel Drake Johnson, John Logan, Nicholas Patricca, Douglas Post, James Sherman, Charles Smith, Jeffrey Sweet and Kristine Thatcher.

For more information about Victory Gardens, www.victorygardens.org. Follow up on Facebook at Facebook.com/victorygardens and Twitter @VictoryGardens.

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