Uncomfortable Politics At Victory Gardens

After rocky times from the pandemic to the mass exodus of staff and creative partners that led this esteemed and theatre to shut down productions and become a rental venue, it appears Victory Gardens Theater is back, and facing head on the very topics that led to the turmoil. 

And it's a crash course.  Zayd Ayers Dohrn gives us a new play,The Humanities, that doesn’t look away from the violence of ideology, from the creepiness of Academia as a business with branding, from the soul crushing concessions that humans keep making and even wades into sex and gender as a battlefield.  This is a graphic portrayal of the state of democracy, if democracy still exists outside of idealogy anymore. And freedom in the lens of this play seems illusory. 

 Strap in when you go to this tale: it is a bumpy ride. 

Director Edward Torres has assembled a powerful cast who bring to life these complicated and not necessarily likeable characters who keep selling their souls to devils of their own making. Veteran actor Steve Pickering returns to the stage to bring to life the old guard-a  formerly esteemed professor who is genuinely disoriented when all the rules have changed. It’s his long ago student, now a controversial right wing personality (played with good natured arrogance by Daniil Krimer), whose visit for a speech fractures the campus and leads to violence. So much for intellectual freedom and the exchange of ideas!   His wife Margot (the elegant Naomi Evans) is also a professor-of art history-who propositions the new assistant professor Jonas (an eloquent Ernest Bentley)for a threesome. They are white, he is black. But every character in this drama is compromised and dealing with profound aspects of the politics and power struggles inherent in identity. Characters are constantly telling other characters how they should feel and act on the basis of their identity as acts of control mixed with "love".

There is a moment where the old professor gives us all a lecture on just what his philosophical underpinnings of identity are. This as he loses his own identity as he is about to be replaced by his possible token hire(lesbian, Hispanic) Milta (played by Isa Arciniegas) who is hooking up with one of the militant students.  

There are several lectures that exist within this play giving it a very presentational power-pointy feel– we are in the lecture hall of this fictional university led by Carole (Sabine Wan)who clawed up the ladder and wants an ironclad hold on the story of this esteemed place of “learning”.  We the audience are the ones doing the learning-- seeing that universities are a landmine field and the price of entry is privilege. 

This play is a sensory and conceptual overload and probably needs to be seen more than once to unpack all that is compressed in this two hour story. Not a single character is a hero here, but neither does it appear that  is there a villain.  Victory Gardens has pulled no punches in this inaugural offering and it’s a tale that needs to be bravely told and marinated on right now. Mission accomplished. 

The Humanities is playing Thursdays through Sundays through October 4, 2026 at the Victory Gardens Theater at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. For tickets and information go to https://victorygardens.org/event/the-humanities-world-premiere/

For  reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com/