Victory Gardens Theater, which has mostly been quiet since a 2022 dispute erupted around the dismissal of its former artistic director, Ken-Matt Martin, says it has hired an interim artistic director as well as “reimagined artistic vision.”
The new hire is Edward Torres, a well-respected Chicago actor and the former artistic director of Chicago’s Teatro Vista Productions. Torres was the director of the most recent Victory Gardens production, the Chicago premiere of David Mamet’s “Henry Johnson” roughly a year ago. Among Torres’ past hits was the 2009 Victory Gardens production of “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” by Kristoffer Diaz.
The Victory Gardens board of directors, which owns and operates the historic but currently under-utilized Biograph Theatre (2433 N. Lincoln Ave.) in Lincoln Park, also said that it has hired Archana Vaidya as interim executive director. Vaidya’s background primarily has been in environmental and nonprofit consulting, although she also has been involved with South Asian theater groups in the Chicago area.
Victory Gardens also said it had articulated a new vision: “New work. Boldly.” And it said that its mission would now be defined as: “Victory Gardens Theater serves as a sanctuary for fearless artistic exchange, producing new work that ignites the imagination and challenges the mind.”
The first endeavor under this new branding will be a March 21 staged reading of “An Ocean Away” by the Belarusian playwright Andrei Kureichik, billed as a “chorus of real Ukrainian and diaspora stories revealing the cost of war and the fierce human will to survive, remember, and rebuild.”
Along with Torres, the cast of mostly familiar Chicago theater names will include Angelina Davila, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Kris Downing, Arina Ermakova, Michael Milligan, Iliana Raykovski, Yasen Peyankov, Kaz Qutab and Lusia Strus. Kureichik is currently a Neubauer Fellow and doctoral student at the University of Chicago. He has been an outspoken dissident voice against the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
