Victory Gardens Theater Presents Chicago One-Minute Play Festival 5/15-16

Victory Gardens presents The Chicago One-Minute Play Festival as a benefit for the Victory Gardens Fresh Squeezed series. The event will be held in the Zacek-McVay Theater at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park on May 15 and 16, 2011, at 7:30pm.

Approximately 90, one-minute plays by about 45 or so established and emerging playwrights will be commissioned for the two-night only event. A One-Minute Play is a form of theatre that looks at the ten-minute play form and structure, and distills it down to the most immediate story-telling event or core emotional content. The evening promises to be as quick as it is epic in its scope.

The One-Minute Play Festival was created in New York in 2007 by Dominic D'Andrea to promote the spirit of radical inclusion for writers of different age, gender, race, culture and point of career. The One-Minute play challenges the playwrights to expertly craft a theatrical moment. It requires a new sensibility to work in this deceptively small form. The Chicago One-Minute Play Festival will include working Chicago playwrights, including Gloria Bond Clunie, Kristoffer Diaz, Laura Jacqmin, Joel Drake Johnson and Tanya Saracho. Approximately 45 playwrights are expected to participate. Additional playwrights will be announced soon.

"The sixty-second ‘nano plays' have been very successful in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Brunswick, NJ and New York, where there is now an annual festival. Fresh Squeezed is thrilled to be working with Dominic to challenge our playwrights in this new form. More importantly, its going to be badass to have this many artists we admire working on one project, including a ton of writers we have never played with," says Fresh Squeezed Producer Will Rogers.

The Chicago One-Minute Play Festival facilitates a true community of playwrights, actors, directors, and community-at-large to participate in the challenge and creation of progressive short-form theatre. The festival is a true community-based event, and has a sense of both local and national position.

Playwrights who have participated in the One-Minute Play Festival in other cities include: Mike Daisey, Jason Grote, Qui Nguyen, Andrea Thome, Caridad Svich , Kristoffer Diaz, Crystal Skillman, Michael Golmaco and Tanya Saracho.

Logistics and Amenities
Performances are at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue, in the heart of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Tickets are $15 and are available through the Victory Gardens Box Office, 773.871.3000 (tty: 773.871.0682), email tickets@victorygardens.org, or visit www.victorygardens.org.

Parking
Discounted parking is available one block south at Children's Memorial Hospital for all shows except weekday matinees (no overnights). Metered and street parking is available, but mind the neighborhood parking restrictions.

Public transit
By CTA train, take the Red, Purple or Brown lines to the Fullerton stop. Walk east on Fullerton to Lincoln, then north 1/2 block to the theater. The #8 Halsted, #11 Lincoln, #37 Sedgwick/Ogden, and #74 Fullerton CTA buses all stop at the corner of Fullerton and Halsted, 1/2 block south of the theater. See transitchicago.com for times and routes.

Pre- and post-show dining
See www.victorygardens.org for a list of Victory Gardens' neighborhood dining partners. Each is within walking distance of the Biograph, and all offer a special discount to patrons who present a Victory Gardens ticket stub.

About Fresh Squeezed
Fresh Squeezed brings together provocative and exemplary artists in a series of special performances seeking out new, diverse audiences. Through language, music, poetry and history, Fresh Squeezed explores the varied ways theater is being performed today and surveys the performing arts medium to bring fresh new perspectives to the stage.

Fresh Squeezed encourages new people to visit the theater and poke around. Not just new audiences - but also new writers and performers and cultures and ideas. We are a theater dedicated to tending new plays, and in our rapidly diversifying cultural landscape, Fresh Squeezed allows us to cast a wide net and find hidden treasures that are relevant to our community. But don't get the wrong idea; it doesn't all have to be that heady. Victory Gardens is about some nonsense and laughter too.

About Victory Gardens Theater
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.

In 2009, 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 $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 Fresh Squeezed is sponsored in part by Boeing. 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.

To post a comment, you must register and login.