CHICAGO — Victory Gardens Theater, a venerable and Tony Award-winning Chicago company that has seen more than its share of staff turmoil in recent years, appears to have entered another deeply unstable period.
On Tuesday, the Tribune has learned, the Victory Gardens board of directors informed the staff that the current artistic director, Ken-Matt Martin, had been placed on leave and that the final candidate for the open position of executive director, Marissa Lynn Ford, had withdrawn. Acting managing director Roxanna Conner had also told staffers that she is resigning at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, a group of affiliated artists — resident directors Lili-Anne Brown and Jess McLeod, and ensemble playwrights Marisa Carr, Keelay Gipson, Isaac Gomez and Stacey Rose — announced in an online post that they too had resigned from the theater, which operates at the historic Biograph Theatre in Lincoln Park.
