Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre names Chay Yew Artistic Director (May11)

Victory Gardens Theatre, the Chicago company that has long made its principal mission the championing of new plays and playwrights, has announced its new artistic director. He is Chay Yew, a playwright and director who served as the head of the Mark Taper Forum's Asian Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles for 10 years. Yew's plays have been produced by New York's Public Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Mark Taper Forum, the Manhattan Theatre Club and many others. His directing credits include stints at the New York Theatre Workshop, American Conservatory Theatre, the Long Wharf Theatre, and Actor's Theatre of Louisville. In Chicago he has been involved with the Goodman's Latino Festival, and in 2009 he directed "Po Boy Tango" at Northlight Theatre.

Yew has directed world premieres by such prominent playwrights as Jose Rivera, Naomi Iizuka, Kia Corthron, Julia Cho and Jessica Goldberg. He has received an OBIE and DramaLogue Award for his direction.

Emerging as the successful candidate for the position after a wide-ranging national search, Yew will succeed Dennis Zacek, one of the pioneers of Chicago's Off Loop theater scene, who has spent more than three decades at the helm of Victory Gardens. Zacek was on record as backing his associate, Sandy Shinner, as his successor. Shinner devised the innovative Ignition Festival, out of which Kristoffer Diaz's play, "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," emerged, going on to a New York production, being named a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist and becoming the winner of this year's prestigious Off Broadway Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding new play.

Yew, who was born in Singapore and now lives in New York (and said he is "46 years old going on 29"), will become the first Asian-American artist to serve as artistic director of a major Chicago theater company.

In a prepared statement, Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New York's Public Theatre, described Yew as "one of our most thrilling and boundary-defying artists," and noted that he has "vision, skill and talent to burn. Passionate and cool-headed simultaneously, he is going to be a wonderful artistic director."

Playwright Henry David Hwang ("M. Butterfly") noted that Yew "is not only a distinguished playwright himself, but knows how to guide other writers' projects to artistic fruition."

"My goal at Victory Gardens is to hold onto the theater's mission — because that is what sets it apart — and to enhance it, " said Yew. "I want to continue to make it a home to American theater artists, particularly Chicago artists, in an interesting way that also explore's this city's pluralism. I hope to keep the Ignition Festival going but maybe even raise the bar by eliminating the age limit. And while the focus will be on new plays, I think a play that maybe didn't find its best self in its premiere might deserve to be done again and come into its own. The inportant thing is for the work to be contemporary and to speak to a contemporary audience. And while I have reached out to the stable of playwrights Dennis [Zacek] has assembled over the years, I hope to refine and amplify that list.""

As for producing his own plays, Yew said he has made it clear that is not something he wants to do at Victory Gardens.

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