Playwright in NY

The Victory Gardens Theatre [http://www.victorygardens.org/default.asp] is officially opening its new home this weekend.  I am a resident playwright there and so am looking forward to the festivities.  Writers have been encouraged to dress up in costumes appropriate to the 1920s, which is appropriate because the building in which our theatre is now located is the Biograph Theatre which for years was a movie house and was notorious for being where gangster John Dillinger was ambushed and cut down after emerging from having just seen the movie Manhattan Melodrama.  (His death, of course, was re-enacted in other movies.  Not that this has anything to do with Victory Gardens.)  I'm planning on showing up as a reporter from the Chicago Examiner, which is the rag to which Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns swore loyalty in The Front Page, the first great play about Chicago.

I'm beginning to get a little excited about the move.  Truth to tell, I liked our old space a couple of blocks south on Lincoln Avenue just fine.  I thought it was a warm, intimate house and I had a great time putting up a series of plays there.  (My loyalty is less to buildings than to collaborators.)  But, during my last visit, I was taken on a tour of the new building and can see all sorts of things that will now be technically possible for the first time under the Victory Gardens banner.

Though I don't know the man, I'd like to give a nod to Mayor Daley.  I don't claim to be expert on the ins and outs of his administration, but I do know that his record is unequaled among mayors in the United States in the support of theatre.  With his help and influence, a number of companies have grown into splendid new homes -- the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare and Lookingglass.  With municipal support like this, it's no wonder that Chicago has become one of the world's major theatre towns. 

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