Victory Gardens announces 2012–13 season

Victory Gardens Theater this morning released details of its 2012–13 season, the first to be fully programmed under new artistic director Chay Yew. Like Ameriville, which Yew belatedly plugged into the current season, the new slate feels like a further step in a new direction for the theater, with new works from a number of exciting young playwrights and a rising generation of directors—and perhaps notably, nothing from VG's longstanding Playwrights Ensemble, which the theater's website now refers to in the past tense.

The season opens with the Chicago premiere of Bill Cain's Equivocation, a comic political thriller that imagines Shakespeare struggling with a royal commission that promotes the government's version of Guy Fawkes's plot; Sean Graney directs (September 14–October 24).

Seth Bockley will direct Failure: A Love Story, a new work by Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins that's described as a fable about a trio of sisters in 1920s Chicago (November 16–December 30). 

Dexter Bullard helms the U.S. premiere of Anupama Chandrasekhar's one-act Disconnect, set in an Indian call center where workers fake American accents to connect with consumers in Illinois (January 25–February 24).

Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, about a dying, morbidly obese Idaho gay man hoping to reconnect with his estranged daughter, gets a Chicago premiere directed by Joanie Schultz (April 5–May 5).

The season closes out with Chicago is Burning, a world premiere by Marcus Gardley set amid the South Side ball scene. Yew will direct (May 31–June 30).