Terry Galloway and Michael Kearns Launch Victory Gardens Fresh Squeezed 09.10 Spotlight on LGBTQ Artists

One-night-only performances by nationally acclaimed queer artists Terry Galloway (November 15), and Michael Kearns (November 22), kick off a special spotlight on LGBTQ-focused work this season at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, as part of Victory Gardens Fresh Squeezed, a series of offbeat performance-based events targeting younger and diverse audiences.

Both Galloway and Kearns will perform on the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater mainstage, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, followed later this season by fellow queer icons Charles Busch and Julie Halston (December 7), and Tim Miller and Holly Hughes (March 15-21, 2010). Tickets are now on sale for all 2009-2010 Fresh Squeezed LGBTQ performances. Call 773.871.3000, or purchase online at http://www.victorygardens.org. More details follow:

Terry Galloway's Out All Night and Lost My Shoes
Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 day of show

Don't miss this Chicago premiere - presented as part of Victory Gardens Fresh Squeezed and the Access Project Crip Slam Series.

Not quite blind as a bat but definitely deaf as a doornail, lesbian performance artist Terry Galloway is a modern medical accident who makes wild sport of her own disabilities in defense of the defenseless. Side-splitting funny and shocking, Out All Night and Lost My Shoes is her largely autobiographical, outrageous whirlwind show. Anger, fear, and the aftermath of a self-loathing childhood are never far from the surface ("no ears, weak eyes, teeth broke, fat butt and these legs"). But transformed by humor, they become the tools of her daring break-out into a world where danger is compounded by being "deaf, weird, and a woman."

When Galloway was born, no one knew an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system. After her family moved from Berlin, Germany, to Austin, Texas, hers became a deafening, hallucinatory childhood where everything, including her own body, changed for the worse. As a 10-year-old self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury at her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since, Galloway has used theater and performance to defy and transcend her reality, her queer identity, and her silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters.

Hailed by Time Out London as "just a little scary, like eating snails or doing oral sex for the first time," Out all Night... may just shake Galloway's audience out of its gosh-aren't-we-enlightened complacency and onto that uncomfortable narrow ledge where they're not sure whether they should laugh or cry. Go to meanlittledeafqueer.com for more information about Galloway and her new memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer.

Michael Kearns' intimacies
Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 day of show

In anticipation of World AIDS Day (December 1) and celebrating two decades of tireless efforts for the LGBTQ community and its friends, Victory Gardens Fresh Squeezed is proud to host the only Chicago stop of Michael Kearns's celebrated solo show, intimacies, now on its 20th anniversary revival tour.

It's nearly impossible to imagine the entertainment world without a thriving LGBTQ culture and the HIV/AIDS movement, but it was less than 20 years ago when Hollywood's first openly gay actor, Michael Kearns, made history with the announcement that he was HIV positive. This collection of six multi-faceted monologues crosses boundaries of race, age, gender, and sexual identity to shed a personal light on the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s.

"This will be different today than it was 20 years ago," said Kearns, "because I have 20 years of new experience to bring to all six of them; 20 years of agony and ecstasy; 20 years of maturation as well as insidious addiction; 20 years of deaths and a few births." With intimacies, Kearns also reminds us that only when we reconsider The catalysts for public fear and ignorance can we celebrate how far we've come as we challenge ourselves to secure equal rights for LGBTQ citizens.

Kearns first garnered success as a mainstream actor, appearing in such television shows as The Waltons, Cheers, Murder She Wrote, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Band Played On. He continued his career as an activist pioneer and solo performance artist, and is a fixture in the Los Angeles world of art and politics. He received the 2002 Playwrights' Arena Award for Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theatre, acknowledging three decades of work as an actor, writer, producer, director, teacher, and fundraiser. As a playwright, his one-person performance pieces - The Truth Is Bad Enough, intimacies, more intimacies, Rock, Attachments, and Tell-Tale Kisses - have been produced throughout the U.S. and abroad. For more information, visit http://www.michaelkearns.net.

An Evening with Charles Busch & Julie Halston
Monday, December 7, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 day of show

The original Vampire Lesbians of Sodom are together again. This unpredictable evening of conversation with alt-theater mainstays Charles Busch and Julie Halston will be the cheekiest gift you've given yourself in years. Known for his drag star alter-egos in works like Die, Mommie, Die! and Psycho Beach Party, as well as the Tony nominated Broadway hit, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, writer-director-actor Busch will take the stage with his best friend and muse, Julie Halston. She is the acclaimed actress most recognized as Bitsy Von Muffling from Sex and The City who began her career originating roles in Busch's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. For one night only, the pair will recount their theatrical climb from campy cult success to critical acclaim on film, television, and Broadway. Through anecdotes, film clips and recreating scenes from Busch's plays, the two will share the triumphs and tribulations that made for longevity in not only their professional lives but their friendship as well.

Tim Miller's Lay of the Land
Opening: March 15, 2010, 7:30pm
Runs with Holly Hughes' The Dog and Pony Show: March 19 at 8 pm, March 20 at 8 pm, and March 21 at 5 pm
Tickets: $25, $40 with The Dog and Pony Show

Paired with

Holly Hughes' The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony)
Opening: March 18, 2010, 7:30pm
Runs with Tim Miller's Lay of the Land: March 19 at 9:30pm, March 20 at 5 pm, and March 21 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $25, $40 with Lay of the Land

When the NEA revoked funding to four artists in 1990 for work deemed indecent, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes - no strangers to regressive progress - were plaintiffs on the front line. The unprecedented censorship led to a Supreme Court ruling that permanently discontinued all NEA funding to individual artists.

Tim Miller defines himself from the beginning as the gay little sperm that could. With fierce wit and candor, Miller eloquently drives through narratives with more stamina than an honor roll student on Adderall. Lay of the Land is Miller's saucy, sharp-knifed look at the State of the Queer Union during a time of trial. Careening from his sexy misadventures performing in 45 States, to Marriage Equality street protests, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, to his life as a grade-school flag monitor, to choking on cheap meat caught in his 10 year old gay boy's throat, Lay of the Land friskily gets at that feeling of queer people being perpetually on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu!

Don't miss this heralded new work as well as the opportunity to work with Miller when he conducts a week-long workshop with the Victory Gardens Training Center.

"I don't think circle is really my shape," says Holly Hughes of her career in performance art that's taken her from an uneventful upbringing in Michigan to a heroic and controversial performance career in New York and back again to Michigan where she is a professor at the University of Michigan. Former member of the WOW Café, a feminist theater collective made up of women who had been booted from other like collectives, Hughes made a name for herself as a lesbian performer known for plucky solo works that fearlessly dig for tangible identity in the wire-crossed world of sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, and socio-political cultures.

With original work that includes The Lady Dick, World Without End, Dress Suits for Hire, Preaching To The Perverted and Clit Notes, Hughes is produced worldwide and has garnered two Obie Awards, a Lambda Book Award, a GLAAD Media Award, and a Distinguished Alumni Award. Hughes unleashes her post-racial poodle with the Chicago premiere of her newest work, The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony), a meditation on midlife set in the eye of a canine.

The Victory Gardens Biograph Theater is located 1/2 block north of Fullerton in the heart of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Discounted parking is available one block south at Children's Memorial Hospital, and Lincoln Park Hospital two blocks south at Children's Memorial Hospital. By CTA train, take the Red, Purple and Brown lines to Fullerton. Walk east on Fullerton, then north on Lincoln 1/2 block. The #8 Halsted, #11 Lincoln, #37 Sedgwick/Ogden, and #74 Fullerton CTA buses all stop at Fullerton and Halsted, 1/2 block south of the theater.

More about Victory Gardens' 2009-2010 Fresh Squeezed Series

Victory Gardens' 2009-2010 Fresh Squeezed series promises to explore the art of storytelling from every direction. This season, Fresh Squeezed will also showcase national paragons like Mike Daisey, along with local favorites like The Neo-Futurists, 2nd Story, and Rohina. Victory Gardens 2009-2010 Fresh Squeezed Series is part of the New Audiences for New Plays initiative funded by a Wallace Foundation Excellence Award. For complete information, visit victorygardens.org/freshsqueezed <http://www.victorygardens.org/freshsqueezed> .

About Victory Gardens Theater

Victory Gardens Theater is home to the bold voices of world premiere theater. The company features the work of its own 14-member Playwrights Ensemble, as well as that of exciting playwrights who are changing theater in the United States and abroad. 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 Regional Theatre. The company's dedication to developing, supporting and producing new work makes Victory Gardens an American Center for New Plays. For complete information, visit victorygardens.org <http://www.victorygardens.org/> .

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