CHICAGO — On Monday, Chicago’s theater and journalism communities were set to gather in celebration of the life of former Tribune critic Richard Christiansen in the theater space at the Biograph that bears his name. But the event, timed to what would have been the 91st birthday of the famously supportive and courtly critic, was postponed. Nobody involved wanted to get caught up in the mess that is Victory Gardens Theater.
That crisis, if you have not been keeping up, has rendered the Tony Award-winning theater, a 48-year-old bedrock of the city’s famous off-Loop scene and the caretaker of one of Chicago’s most important buildings, the historic Biograph Theatre, without an artistic director, an executive director, an announced season or any kind of functionality whatsoever. Its staff, to the extent there still is a staff, is angry and unhappy. The board of directors has been accused on social media, without any credible evidence but with plenty of likes, of looting the theater for its own benefit. At one point, I drove past the building and saw a red, do-not-cross tape over the doors. I almost threw up through my car window.
Yet despite all of the media coverage, it remains opaque what happened, not least because neither the board of directors nor the artistic director they fired are talking on the record, beyond mostly unhelpful and litigated statements. Clearly, there was disagreement over the board’s purchase of real estate attached to the building (which presumably could have generated income for the company, if done right), a sense among a rebellious staff that a dysfunctional board had its priorities wrong, and a vital search process gone awry. Neither side, as far as I can tell, are talking at all about the Victory Gardens audience. Both sides, clearly, are doing likely irreparable damage to the Victory Gardens brand.
