Victory Gardens Announces Redesign of 'Professional Training Center'

Victory Gardens announces a fresh vision and curriculum for its renamed and redesigned Professional Training Center at Victory Gardens.   This marks the beginning of comprehensive and progressive programming and curricula for its Adult Training Center and the brand new Youth Training Center.
 
The Professional Training Center is designed to emphasize working artists who are interested in furthering the pursuit of their craft.  Victory Gardens has hired top professional artists and administrators-including Victory Gardens Artistic Director Dennis Za?ek, playwright Lisa Dillman, Court Theatre's Casting Director Cree Rankin, Victory Gardens Ensemble Playwright James Sherman, Dean of DePaul Theater School and Ensemble Playwright Dean Corrin, playwright Philip Dawkins, dialect coach Eva Breneman, playwright Arlene Malinowski, actor/improviser Rebecca Sohn and cabaret artist George Howe -to lead the new slate of classes.  The program is unique in Chicago; no other theater offers comprehensive training or classes with such accomplished professionals.
 
The Professional Training Center philosophy and curriculum has been redesigned by a Victory Gardens team, led by Director of Arts Education and Training Robert Cornelius.  "Here at Victory Gardens we have re-dedicated ourselves to help create the total theater artist - and the classes and instructors we are offering reflect that dedication," says Cornelius.  "We have some of the best in their respective fields, and believe we have a more comprehensive and useful training program for the developing artist as well as the working professional."
 
The eight-week fall term begins the week of September 27, 2010.  Registration is available by downloading the materials at www.victorygardens.org or by calling the Training Center, 773.549.5788.  A $10 discount is available for early registration; a 20% discount is available on multiple class registration.
Victory Gardens offers scholarship and work study programs as part of its outreach, making the programs accessible to the entire community.  Two scholarships will be offered per session to teen playwriting and acting ensemble students; two will be offered for each session of adult classes.
 
Students at all levels of their professional and artistic development are encouraged to participate, but students should be interested in studying a complete range of disciplines with the goal of becoming a complete artist.
 
The Adult Training Center offers several tracks: Performance (Improv & Instinct, Monologue & Audition Technique, Scene Study, and Acting through Song); and Playwriting (Technique, Genres, Character Development, Plot Development, and Adaptations).  Both tracks offer audition-based Master Class series led by Za?ek, Corrin, Breneman, Malinowski and other leaders in their fields.  Each session will culminate in a showcase for students in the The Za?ek McVay Theater for invited friends, family, staff, outside agencies, the literary community, directors and theater faculty.
 
An eight-week Artists Development Workshop, presented in association with The Access Project, is a playwriting course emphasizing the development of the dramatic voices of previously unheard populations, particularly disabled people.
 
The Youth Training Center offers a program similar to the Adult curriculum, comprised of a Performance track with age-based Acting Labs (grades 7-10 and 10-12); a three-level sequence of Playwriting; and an Acting Lab Ensemble for students grades 8-12 to audition, rehearse and perform in an ensemble-based show, performed in December in the Za?ek McVay Theater.
 
As part of the Youth Training Center, Victory Gardens is creating The Youth Council this fall in an effort to create the next generation of theatergoers, artists and administrators.  Chicago teachers will be asked to help recruit students for the council.  The students will have the opportunity for a hands-on experience to learn about theater through access and staff mentorship.  Students will plan and host events throughout the season and will act as a voice of Victory Gardens as well reviewing, blogging and posting online and on social sites. 
 
In addition to the Training Center, Victory Gardens also offers other Arts Education programming, the main components of which are Drama in the Schools, a teaching artist residency program in the Chicago Public Schools; the Scholarship Subscription Series, a program of free student matinees of VGT season subscription productions at the Biograph; and the VGT Youth Theater Network for teens.  In the coming season, these programs will engage more than 5,000 students and their teachers, mainly from Chicago's neediest neighborhoods.  
 
For more information and Professional Training Center class details, visit www.victorygardens.org.
 
Under the leadership of Artistic Director Dennis Za?ek and Executive Director Jan Kallish, 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 U.S. 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 Outstanding Regional Theatre.  The company's dedication to developing, supporting and producing new work makes Victory Gardens an American Center for New Plays.

In 2006, Victory Gardens successfully completed an $11.8 million renovation of Chicago's famed Biograph Theater, and moved two blocks north from its longtime venue at 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue, to its beautiful new home in one of Chicago's most celebrated historic landmarks.  Renamed Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, the new venue is a state-of-the-art 299-seat mainstage which has greatly expanded the company's artistic flexibility, while enhancing Victory Gardens' ability to welcome patrons old and new.   
 
Last summer, Victory Gardens completed the second phase of renovation at the Biograph, building an intimate, new, 109-seat studio theater on the second floor.  On March 1, 2010, at a special launch event for Victory Gardens new, $1 million Campaign for Growth, the theater's new studio was officially named the Richard Christiansen Theater, in honor of the Chicago Tribune chief critic emeritus and longtime champion of Chicago's live theater scene.  Visit www.victorygardens.org/campaignforgrowth for more details.
 
Victory Gardens Theater receives major funding from John T. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Shubert Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, Allstate Insurance Company, Alphawood Foundation, Motorola Foundation, REAM Foundation, and Crown Family Philanthropies.  Additional funding is provided by: National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council (IAC), a State Agency, CityArts Program 4 Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Charles and M.R. Shapiro Foundation, and by 3Arts, Harry S. Black and Allon Fuller Fund, Charles H. and Bertha L. Boothroyd Foundation, Elizabeth Cheney Foundation, John R. Halligan Fund, Illinois Tool Works (ITW), James S. Kemper Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation and Wrightwood Neighbors Association.

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