Remix to Ignition
Hot, fresh and out of the kitchen (sink)! A Chicago festival gives playwrights of color under 40 new avenues for productions.
By Eliza Bent
Kamal Angelo Bolden in The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, by Kristoffer Diaz, at Victory Gardens Theater. Photo Credit: Liz Lauren.
Challenge
To nurture new work by playwrights of color through the development process to mainstage productions.
Plan
Create a two-year cycle of readings and workshops culminating in at least one full production.
Key Players
Adept literary managers and festival organizers, responsive audiences, playwrights and funders (including Ford Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust and the Edgerton Foundation).
What Worked
Scene samplers, triggering productions at other theatres, connecting artists.
What Didn't
Geographically limited audience, unexpected increase in production costs.
What's Next
Victory Gardens is accepting submissions through April 15 for this summer's Ignition festival.
"It's hard to be a playwright—and it's doubly, triply, quadruply hard to be a young playwright of color," says Sandy Shinner, associate artistic director of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater, which has a longstanding commitment to new plays. Of the 243 plays that have been produced at the 36-year-old company, 142 have been world premieres and 151 have been penned by Chicago authors. Since 1996, the company has had a playwrights' ensemble, whose members account for 50 percent of the work that the theatre produces. Over time, it became apparent to Victory Gardens's leadership that the playwrights' ensemble on its own could not supply the wide variety of voices the company hopes to include in its season. After meetings with the Ford Foundation in 2006, Shinner and her colleagues decided to seek ways of developing and producing fresh work by younger, ethnically diverse playwrights. Two years later, Ignition, a festival dedicated to playwrights of color under 40, was born.
I asked Shinner about the cover of a 2006 issue of Time Out Chicago, which boldly asked, "Why Is Chicago Theatre So White, and How Can We Fix It?" Did that article, and the resulting discussions in the Chicago theatre community, play a role in the founding of Ignition? "From the beginning, Victory Gardens has had a commitment to writers of color," Shinner attests. "We've been one the leaders in this respect. We have diversity, but we've been getting older. The gap Ignition was created to fill within our own organization was more about youth than diversity."
Victory Gardens sent out a call for scripts in January '08, to which 120 writers responded. "The plays didn't have to deal specifically with race, they just had to be written by an author of color," notes Shinner. Half the plays received had racially mixed casts. Along with literary manager Aaron Carter, resident director Andrea Dymond and artistic director Dennis Zacek, Shinner narrowed the pool down to 12 finalists. Of those plays, six were selected to have readings and workshops, with the idea that one script would ultimately be produced by Victory Gardens in its mainstage season.
In August '08, a scene sampler whetted the appetites of playgoers for the weekend of readings to follow. Playwright OyamO kicked off the festival with a keynote address, which was followed by "Spark Plug," a party that Shinner deemed successful for its interdisciplinary features. "There was a mural created in one of the rehearsal rooms; 2nd Story, a group from Chicago, performed monologues; people were silk-screening T-shirts; and there was a DJ."
Ultimately, not one but two plays from Ignition made it into the theatre's season this past fall: Kristoffer Diaz's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Michael Golamco's Year Zero. For Shinner, part of the festival's success was simply putting artists in touch with each other. By involving other theatres from early stages of the festival, the work of the playwrights gained visibility. For example, Diane Rodriguez from Center Theatre Group directed a reading of Fati's Last Dance by France Luce-Benson; and Eddie Torres, artistic director of Chicago's Teatro Vista... Theatre with a View, directed the reading of Diaz's Chad Deity in 2008 as well as the Victory Gardens/Teatro Vista co-production this past fall. Diaz, who resides in Minneapolis, had never met Torres before, but is now one of the resident playwrights at Teatro Vista. Winning the Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award spiked interest in Diaz's script from other theatres: InterAct in Philadelphia produced Chad Deity late in 2009, and this April both Mixed Blood Theatre Company in Minneapolis and Second Stage Theatre in New York City will open productions of the physically demanding play about wrestling. "It is so great to have multiple productions right off the bat," remarks Shinner. "We didn't want to hold Kris or the show back. We were happy to give these other theatres permission to do the show."
The first Ignition festival drew 800 audience members, but Shinner hopes future incarnations, tentatively scheduled for summer 2010, will draw broader attendance from around the country. "We might do multiple performances of readings so that people will have more opportunities to get acquainted with the work," she says. Deciding to produce two Ignition shows instead of one this season was risky, but ultimately an achievement in Shinner's eyes. "We did seven plays in a season when we usually do five, which incurred quite a bit of expense. But we were fortunate to get support from the Chicago Community Trust and the Edgerton Award," she says. More than anything, Shinner hopes the biennial festival will spur enough interest that all of the selected plays garner productions. "We want to maintain the relationships we are building with these writers, and jump-start more productions around the country."
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