Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

It’s sad when a talented band’s closest brush with fame is almost finishing a soundtrack for a movie that never existed, ending up with nothing but demos where one of the guitars is out of tune. To make matters worse, they’d recorded under a new name that almost nobody knew. The history of recorded music is littered with such “almosts,” but the Kelderons’ near miss feels especially sad because they did manage to release a single that’s beloved more than 50 years later. Buckle in for the curious tale of how it all went wrong for this Chicago soul band—and how modern audiences finally got introduced to their music.

Brothers Darrow and Ronnie Kennedy grew up in the Rockwell Gardens public housing project in East Garfield Park with their friends Leroy Pointer and Ted Patton, and while in high school at Crane Tech, the four of them formed the Kelderons. Other Crane alumni included Eldee Young (of Young-Holt Unlimited and the Ramsey Lewis Trio) and the Ideals, and members of the Pharaohs (a soul-jazz band that contributed musicians to Earth, Wind & Fire) attended Crane Junior College, which shared the building on Jackson at Oakley.

The odd word “Kelderons” supposedly arose from a combination of letters in their last names, though it’s not clear where that “L” came from. The group would sing in school hallways and often competed in local talent shows. At Precious Blood Church on Western and Congress (now an alternative high school called Ombudsman Chicago West), they won one such contest over rivals the Modern Men. After the loss, Modern Men members John Banks and Allen Brown wanted to join forces with the Kennedy brothers—so the Kelderons let go of Patton and Pointer. Joined by Banks, Brown, and classmate Bruce Rodgers on guitar, they ramped up their activity and became the most beloved band at Crane.

Their ambition didn’t go unnoticed, and soon after graduation they were introduced to Marcellus Burke, brother of Clarence Burke, patriarch of the family whose children made up the Five Stairsteps (of “O-o-h Child” fame). Marcellus was a police officer but managed musicians on the side (back then, it seemed like everybody did), and he added the Kelderons to a revue he booked. 

The band changed their name to fit the misprint, but that didn’t help their career. After six years of struggle, they dumped Burke, who was still their manager. The Kaldirons also renamed themselves the Solution—and then, regrettably, the Final Solution (whose sinister associations with the Third Reich apparently escaped them). But then they got a lucky break: trumpeter Paul Serrano, who was seeking bands for his fledgling label, got in touch. 

Serrano had played with stars such as Art Farmer, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Mongo Santamaría, and beginning in the late 60s, he ran P.S. Studios, which eventually settled at 323 E. 23rd. The studio’s output included albums for the likes of Ramsey Lewis, Ahmad Jamal, the Emotions, and Natalie Cole, and in the early 70s, Serrano launched an offshoot label called P.S. Records. 

Serrano asked the Final Solution to come in and cut some tracks, but the sessions didn’t go particularly well at first. The band turned the corner when songwriter Carl Wolfolk, another Crane graduate, got involved—he happened to be working on demos of his own at P.S. Studios. Wolfolk had cowritten the 1968 smash “Can I Change My Mind” for R&B star Tyrone Davis, as well as material for the Dells and Little Richard.

In the 70s, huge hit soundtracks—especially Super Fly and Shaft—caused a seismic shift as the world embraced the funky music from the films. Chicago responded with The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a satire about the CIA’s only Black agent, shot locally and released in 1973—but Herbie Hancock’s score only made it to the test-pressing phase (and was bootlegged on LP in the mid-2000s). Melvin Van Peebles’s groundbreaking 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song used a young Earth, Wind & Fire, and 1974’s Three the Hard Way (with Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Jim Kelly) featured the Impressions. The very Chicagoan 1978 movie Stony Island had a slamming soundtrack of top-shelf musicians, among them saxophonist Gene Barge and future members of soul-funk band Maxx Traxx.

In the mid-70s, Chuck Colbert Jr. threw his hat into the ring. He’d played bass in hit-making garage-pop group the American Breed (“Bend Me, Shape Me”), and he went on to work as a producer, studio vocalist, and jingle writer, among other things. His father was something of a music-scene Svengali, and he hooked Colbert up with the job of supervising the music for an upcoming Blaxploitation film. Titled Brotherman, the movie didn’t yet have a finished script, but it had a catchy tagline already: “The pusher who became a preacher.” 

Wolfolk acquired the rights to the unfinished Brotherman material from Colbert’s father, but his attempts to shop the tracks around Los Angeles went nowhere. The tapes wound up in a closet, and the story of the Kelderons appeared to have ended.

Fast-forward to the 2000s, when local reissue label the Numero Group label was working to license the Kelderons/Kaldirons single for the 2007 compilation Eccentric Soul: Twinight’s Lunar Rotation. At that point, nobody at the label even knew the members’ names. Chicago soul guru Bob Abrahamian provided a tip—he knew that the group had been managed by Marcellus Burke—and Rob Sevier at Numero was able to contact Burke. Luckily, Burke ran into one of the Kennedy brothers in a grocery store and learned the name of their group at the time, which helped Sevier track them down. 

In his first conversation with Sevier, Darrow Kennedy alluded to an album the Kelderons had recorded, which put Numero on the trail of the Brotherman score. Finding the original tapes was no mean feat, though. Wolfolk had given them to Kennedy for safekeeping (he’d had some trouble with the law), but around 2005, he’d gotten back in touch to retrieve the reels. The Numero crew couldn’t reach Wolfolk by phone or email, so they eventually just showed up at what they hoped was his home in the western suburb of Stone Park. By all but promising a reissue, they were able to walk out with the tapes.

The elusive Brotherman soundtrack saw the light of day in 2008, more than 30 years after it was recorded. Wolfolk and the Kelderons got another chance to get paid what they deserved for their great work—the breezy, harmonious “Gotta Get Through to You,” the catchy and soulful “To See You Again,” the funky, wah-wah-soaked “Theme From Brotherman.” Clearly I’m not the only listener who’s unbothered by the guitar tuning—some of the songs have even been licensed for TV and film. 

Most of the former Kelderons are still gigging in local bands too, which is hardly the norm for Secret History stories—more often, I have to conclude these tales by telling you how someone dropped out of music or died. So we’ll call this a happy ending—and a dang funky one.

Read More

The tangled recent history of Victory Gardens Theater became even more complicated this week with the mass dismissal of the remaining staff members in the wake of an attempt to unionize. It’s the latest development in a series of moves that has thrown the survival of the venerable Tony Award-winning regional theater—long a beacon for new work through various iterations of its playwrights ensemble—into sharp question.

The newest chapter in the long history of disputes between Victory Gardens’s artistic staff and the board (a longer article on this history and the lessons it holds for nonprofit arts organizations is in the works) began in June when the board placed then-artistic director Ken-Matt Martin, who was named to the post in March 2021, on administrative leave. Martin’s hiring itself came in the wake of the controversial appointment of Erica Daniels to the new role of executive artistic director in May 2020 to replace outgoing artistic director Chay Yew. Martin became the first Black artistic director in Victory Gardens history, and one of only a few at a major regional theater in the country.

Daniels had previously been executive director at VG. The then-playwrights ensemble resigned en masse, in part to protest what they saw as the board failing to provide promised input from the artists into the selection process of Yew’s successor. Daniels departed from Victory Gardens, and then-board president Steven Miller stepped down from that leadership position, though he remained on the board. (At the time of Martin’s appointment, he was listed as an emeritus board member.) 

Victory Gardens had been running under Martin with Roxanna Conner as acting managing director and Charles E. Harris II as board president, but the plan had always been to hire a permanent executive director to work alongside Martin, and the board had begun a search process. The company returned to full productions after the COVID-19 shutdown this past winter with travis tate’s Queen of the Night, followed by Ali Viterbi’s In Every Generationand an astonishing production of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah. 

The latter was still running when Martin was placed on leave in early June. On June 30, Martin was released from his position at Victory Gardens. In a statement on his website, Martin noted, “I asked twice in the meeting what was the cause and was not given any. Instead, I was offered a minimum amount of severance and was asked to sign an NDA and give up all claims on future lawsuits. After I cited the lack of cause, the board offered more severance, but still with an NDA. I requested the inclusion of language allowing me to make ‘truthful statements’ and was refused. I have received no disciplinary notices, formal or informal warnings, and have had no complaints filed against me or any documented infractions.” Since Martin received no severance, ten artistic directors at theaters around the country (though none from Chicago) announced on August 16 that they were sponsoring a $30,000 commission for him to write an autobiographical play.

The source of the most recent conflict seems to stem from two board decisions. First is the refusal to hire a permanent executive director to replace Conner (who had been director of education at VG before assuming the acting managing director position), though Marissa Lynn Ford, associate managing director at the Goodman, was a top choice for Martin and the staff. The other point of dispute was the board’s decision to purchase the property adjacent to Victory Gardens’s home at the historic Biograph Theater, despite what staff members have described as ongoing maintenance and infrastructure problems in the existing venue, including plumbing problems and roof leaks.

Conner stepped down at the end of July. The cohort of artists who made up the Victory Gardens playwrights ensemble and resident directors (including cullud wattah director Lili-Anne Brown) had earlier resigned on July 6 in protest of Martin’s firing via Medium post. Dickerson-Despenza pulled the rights for the remaining performances of cullud wattah (which had been slated to run through July 17) that same week. 

In response to the artists’ statement and a Reader request for an interview at that time, Harris sent the following on July 14: “The Victory Gardens Theater board is grappling with the theater’s future, as are many other non-profit theaters in this time. We are committed to acting in the theater’s best interests in all matters. We regret the playwrights ensemble’s resignation, and the withdrawal of production rights to cullud wattah by its playwright, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, requiring cancellation of the remainder of its run. We have heard the staff and others’ perspectives. We are a 48-year-old theater company with a rich history of bold and diverse productions. Collectively, our board members have more than 100 years of experience with Victory Gardens, and we know well the delicate balance of managing the artistic well-being of the theater with our fiduciary responsibility. We believe wholeheartedly in the powerful work of Victory Gardens Theater and are committed to finding a way to enable it to continue. We have placed an interim director at Victory Gardens to stabilize the organization while the board considers its path forward. We have no further statement at this time, while we consider ways to fulfill the theater’s mission.” 

In the statement, Harris also disputed the staff and artistic associates’ view of the purchase of the property as fiscally unsound: “The real estate transaction mentioned by the playwrights’ ensemble appears to be misunderstood. The transaction concerns the ownership of the theater property and will have no adverse impact on the financial stability of the theater or its artistic direction. In fact, this minor investment preserves the fabric of the Biograph theater, gets us out from under a challenging co-owner situation and ultimately, saves money in the long run.” The board hasn’t provided further public details on what the plans are for the new addition.

The Victory Gardens Eight: the remaining staff members at the theater were dismissed from their jobs September 7.

With the dismissal of Martin and the departure of Conner, that left a staff of nine (now eight) full-time employees. (Prior to the pandemic, the theater had operated with a full-time staff of around 22 employees.) And earlier this month, those employees, along with the part-time staff of eight, signaled their intent to unionize via the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). (A statement of solidarity that the staff had placed on the Victory Gardens website after Martin’s dismissal was removed by the board; a petition asking for the removal and replacement of the board by July 18 and asking artists to refuse to work at the theater unless that happened was also posted on change.org.)

On September 7, the remaining staff members were each called individually into a meeting with Robert M. Hingsbergen, the newly named “chief executive” of Victory Gardens, and handed letters informing them that they had been let go. Staff members shared the content of the letter with me. It reads in part: “Victory Gardens Theater (‘Victory Gardens’ or ‘VGT’) terminates your employment effective September 7, 2022. The termination is part of a general reduction in workforce due to the lack of business and operational needs, and a change in VGT’s business model such that your current position has been eliminated.” 

Reached for comment, Bo Frazier, the marketing manager at Victory Gardens (speaking on behalf of the entire staff) says they and the rest of the staff view VGT’s actions as part of “a union-busting tactic, given that the staff was pursuing wall-to-wall unionization through IATSE.” According to Frazier, nobody on the remaining staff had received any disciplinary warnings prior to their dismissal. When asked about Hingsbergen’s role at VG, they noted, “He signed the letter as chief executive, and I’ve never heard the title, ever. They hired an interim managing director from CR3, which is a transition management consulting firm. He did a report on the financial and operational standings. And at the end of that 30 days, we were told that this person, who we know as Bob, is coming on. We were never given his official title. We assumed that he was again another interim managing director.” 

Frazier notes that the staff members were emailed at midnight the night before requesting that they all come individually the next day for meetings. “[Hingsbergen] delivered this letter to me personally at the meeting,” Frazier says, and adds, “They gave no specifics [about the reasons for the firing]. All he did was read-quote from the letter. I did ask him what the board was going to do with the theater and I said, ‘Are they going to close the theater?’ And Bob said, ‘It’s unsure, but it’s looking very likely.ʼ” According to Frazier, Hingsbergen did not ask anyone to sign NDAs.

Frazier adds, “This whole thing is avoidable because we have a transition board assembled of 11 people who were willing to step in and take over. And now this board would rather see the theater shutter than see it go on under different management.” They also noted that the company had received “major six-figure grants” prior to the dismissal of Martin. “We were not in bad financial standing.” Frazier notes that the proposed slate of board members from the staff “came alongside a total of six figures in personal donations as well.”

Reached for comment, Martin sent the following statement: “I have always believed in putting people before institutions. My focus remains on caring for the staff and artists impacted by these decisions. The theatre community is already rallying to find these brilliant humans new jobs and engaging in mutual aid to support their transition. That is the only thing that matters.” 

Attempts to reach Harris for clarification on the current situation were unsuccessful. There is a GoFundMe for the fired VG staffers. Under the “Upcoming Events” section of the Victory Gardens website, there’s only the following: “No events to show.”

Read More

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

It’s sad when a talented band’s closest brush with fame is almost finishing a soundtrack for a movie that never existed, ending up with nothing but demos where one of the guitars is out of tune. To make matters worse, they’d recorded under a new name that almost nobody knew. The history of recorded music is littered with such “almosts,” but the Kelderons’ near miss feels especially sad because they did manage to release a single that’s beloved more than 50 years later. Buckle in for the curious tale of how it all went wrong for this Chicago soul band—and how modern audiences finally got introduced to their music.

Brothers Darrow and Ronnie Kennedy grew up in the Rockwell Gardens public housing project in East Garfield Park with their friends Leroy Pointer and Ted Patton, and while in high school at Crane Tech, the four of them formed the Kelderons. Other Crane alumni included Eldee Young (of Young-Holt Unlimited and the Ramsey Lewis Trio) and the Ideals, and members of the Pharaohs (a soul-jazz band that contributed musicians to Earth, Wind & Fire) attended Crane Junior College, which shared the building on Jackson at Oakley.

The odd word “Kelderons” supposedly arose from a combination of letters in their last names, though it’s not clear where that “L” came from. The group would sing in school hallways and often competed in local talent shows. At Precious Blood Church on Western and Congress (now an alternative high school called Ombudsman Chicago West), they won one such contest over rivals the Modern Men. After the loss, Modern Men members John Banks and Allen Brown wanted to join forces with the Kennedy brothers—so the Kelderons let go of Patton and Pointer. Joined by Banks, Brown, and classmate Bruce Rodgers on guitar, they ramped up their activity and became the most beloved band at Crane.

Their ambition didn’t go unnoticed, and soon after graduation they were introduced to Marcellus Burke, brother of Clarence Burke, patriarch of the family whose children made up the Five Stairsteps (of “O-o-h Child” fame). Marcellus was a police officer but managed musicians on the side (back then, it seemed like everybody did), and he added the Kelderons to a revue he booked. 

The band changed their name to fit the misprint, but that didn’t help their career. After six years of struggle, they dumped Burke, who was still their manager. The Kaldirons also renamed themselves the Solution—and then, regrettably, the Final Solution (whose sinister associations with the Third Reich apparently escaped them). But then they got a lucky break: trumpeter Paul Serrano, who was seeking bands for his fledgling label, got in touch. 

Serrano had played with stars such as Art Farmer, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Mongo Santamaría, and beginning in the late 60s, he ran P.S. Studios, which eventually settled at 323 E. 23rd. The studio’s output included albums for the likes of Ramsey Lewis, Ahmad Jamal, the Emotions, and Natalie Cole, and in the early 70s, Serrano launched an offshoot label called P.S. Records. 

Serrano asked the Final Solution to come in and cut some tracks, but the sessions didn’t go particularly well at first. The band turned the corner when songwriter Carl Wolfolk, another Crane graduate, got involved—he happened to be working on demos of his own at P.S. Studios. Wolfolk had cowritten the 1968 smash “Can I Change My Mind” for R&B star Tyrone Davis, as well as material for the Dells and Little Richard.

In the 70s, huge hit soundtracks—especially Super Fly and Shaft—caused a seismic shift as the world embraced the funky music from the films. Chicago responded with The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a satire about the CIA’s only Black agent, shot locally and released in 1973—but Herbie Hancock’s score only made it to the test-pressing phase (and was bootlegged on LP in the mid-2000s). Melvin Van Peebles’s groundbreaking 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song used a young Earth, Wind & Fire, and 1974’s Three the Hard Way (with Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Jim Kelly) featured the Impressions. The very Chicagoan 1978 movie Stony Island had a slamming soundtrack of top-shelf musicians, among them saxophonist Gene Barge and future members of soul-funk band Maxx Traxx.

In the mid-70s, Chuck Colbert Jr. threw his hat into the ring. He’d played bass in hit-making garage-pop group the American Breed (“Bend Me, Shape Me”), and he went on to work as a producer, studio vocalist, and jingle writer, among other things. His father was something of a music-scene Svengali, and he hooked Colbert up with the job of supervising the music for an upcoming Blaxploitation film. Titled Brotherman, the movie didn’t yet have a finished script, but it had a catchy tagline already: “The pusher who became a preacher.” 

Wolfolk acquired the rights to the unfinished Brotherman material from Colbert’s father, but his attempts to shop the tracks around Los Angeles went nowhere. The tapes wound up in a closet, and the story of the Kelderons appeared to have ended.

Fast-forward to the 2000s, when local reissue label the Numero Group label was working to license the Kelderons/Kaldirons single for the 2007 compilation Eccentric Soul: Twinight’s Lunar Rotation. At that point, nobody at the label even knew the members’ names. Chicago soul guru Bob Abrahamian provided a tip—he knew that the group had been managed by Marcellus Burke—and Rob Sevier at Numero was able to contact Burke. Luckily, Burke ran into one of the Kennedy brothers in a grocery store and learned the name of their group at the time, which helped Sevier track them down. 

In his first conversation with Sevier, Darrow Kennedy alluded to an album the Kelderons had recorded, which put Numero on the trail of the Brotherman score. Finding the original tapes was no mean feat, though. Wolfolk had given them to Kennedy for safekeeping (he’d had some trouble with the law), but around 2005, he’d gotten back in touch to retrieve the reels. The Numero crew couldn’t reach Wolfolk by phone or email, so they eventually just showed up at what they hoped was his home in the western suburb of Stone Park. By all but promising a reissue, they were able to walk out with the tapes.

The elusive Brotherman soundtrack saw the light of day in 2008, more than 30 years after it was recorded. Wolfolk and the Kelderons got another chance to get paid what they deserved for their great work—the breezy, harmonious “Gotta Get Through to You,” the catchy and soulful “To See You Again,” the funky, wah-wah-soaked “Theme From Brotherman.” Clearly I’m not the only listener who’s unbothered by the guitar tuning—some of the songs have even been licensed for TV and film. 

Most of the former Kelderons are still gigging in local bands too, which is hardly the norm for Secret History stories—more often, I have to conclude these tales by telling you how someone dropped out of music or died. So we’ll call this a happy ending—and a dang funky one.

Read More

The tangled recent history of Victory Gardens Theater became even more complicated this week with the mass dismissal of the remaining staff members in the wake of an attempt to unionize. It’s the latest development in a series of moves that has thrown the survival of the venerable Tony Award-winning regional theater—long a beacon for new work through various iterations of its playwrights ensemble—into sharp question.

The newest chapter in the long history of disputes between Victory Gardens’s artistic staff and the board (a longer article on this history and the lessons it holds for nonprofit arts organizations is in the works) began in June when the board placed then-artistic director Ken-Matt Martin, who was named to the post in March 2021, on administrative leave. Martin’s hiring itself came in the wake of the controversial appointment of Erica Daniels to the new role of executive artistic director in May 2020 to replace outgoing artistic director Chay Yew. Martin became the first Black artistic director in Victory Gardens history, and one of only a few at a major regional theater in the country.

Daniels had previously been executive director at VG. The then-playwrights ensemble resigned en masse, in part to protest what they saw as the board failing to provide promised input from the artists into the selection process of Yew’s successor. Daniels departed from Victory Gardens, and then-board president Steven Miller stepped down from that leadership position, though he remained on the board. (At the time of Martin’s appointment, he was listed as an emeritus board member.) 

Victory Gardens had been running under Martin with Roxanna Conner as acting managing director and Charles E. Harris II as board president, but the plan had always been to hire a permanent executive director to work alongside Martin, and the board had begun a search process. The company returned to full productions after the COVID-19 shutdown this past winter with travis tate’s Queen of the Night, followed by Ali Viterbi’s In Every Generationand an astonishing production of Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah. 

The latter was still running when Martin was placed on leave in early June. On June 30, Martin was released from his position at Victory Gardens. In a statement on his website, Martin noted, “I asked twice in the meeting what was the cause and was not given any. Instead, I was offered a minimum amount of severance and was asked to sign an NDA and give up all claims on future lawsuits. After I cited the lack of cause, the board offered more severance, but still with an NDA. I requested the inclusion of language allowing me to make ‘truthful statements’ and was refused. I have received no disciplinary notices, formal or informal warnings, and have had no complaints filed against me or any documented infractions.” Since Martin received no severance, ten artistic directors at theaters around the country (though none from Chicago) announced on August 16 that they were sponsoring a $30,000 commission for him to write an autobiographical play.

The source of the most recent conflict seems to stem from two board decisions. First is the refusal to hire a permanent executive director to replace Conner (who had been director of education at VG before assuming the acting managing director position), though Marissa Lynn Ford, associate managing director at the Goodman, was a top choice for Martin and the staff. The other point of dispute was the board’s decision to purchase the property adjacent to Victory Gardens’s home at the historic Biograph Theater, despite what staff members have described as ongoing maintenance and infrastructure problems in the existing venue, including plumbing problems and roof leaks.

Conner stepped down at the end of July. The cohort of artists who made up the Victory Gardens playwrights ensemble and resident directors (including cullud wattah director Lili-Anne Brown) had earlier resigned on July 6 in protest of Martin’s firing via Medium post. Dickerson-Despenza pulled the rights for the remaining performances of cullud wattah (which had been slated to run through July 17) that same week. 

In response to the artists’ statement and a Reader request for an interview at that time, Harris sent the following on July 14: “The Victory Gardens Theater board is grappling with the theater’s future, as are many other non-profit theaters in this time. We are committed to acting in the theater’s best interests in all matters. We regret the playwrights ensemble’s resignation, and the withdrawal of production rights to cullud wattah by its playwright, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, requiring cancellation of the remainder of its run. We have heard the staff and others’ perspectives. We are a 48-year-old theater company with a rich history of bold and diverse productions. Collectively, our board members have more than 100 years of experience with Victory Gardens, and we know well the delicate balance of managing the artistic well-being of the theater with our fiduciary responsibility. We believe wholeheartedly in the powerful work of Victory Gardens Theater and are committed to finding a way to enable it to continue. We have placed an interim director at Victory Gardens to stabilize the organization while the board considers its path forward. We have no further statement at this time, while we consider ways to fulfill the theater’s mission.” 

In the statement, Harris also disputed the staff and artistic associates’ view of the purchase of the property as fiscally unsound: “The real estate transaction mentioned by the playwrights’ ensemble appears to be misunderstood. The transaction concerns the ownership of the theater property and will have no adverse impact on the financial stability of the theater or its artistic direction. In fact, this minor investment preserves the fabric of the Biograph theater, gets us out from under a challenging co-owner situation and ultimately, saves money in the long run.” The board hasn’t provided further public details on what the plans are for the new addition.

The Victory Gardens Eight: the remaining staff members at the theater were dismissed from their jobs September 7.

With the dismissal of Martin and the departure of Conner, that left a staff of nine (now eight) full-time employees. (Prior to the pandemic, the theater had operated with a full-time staff of around 22 employees.) And earlier this month, those employees, along with the part-time staff of eight, signaled their intent to unionize via the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). (A statement of solidarity that the staff had placed on the Victory Gardens website after Martin’s dismissal was removed by the board; a petition asking for the removal and replacement of the board by July 18 and asking artists to refuse to work at the theater unless that happened was also posted on change.org.)

On September 7, the remaining staff members were each called individually into a meeting with Robert M. Hingsbergen, the newly named “chief executive” of Victory Gardens, and handed letters informing them that they had been let go. Staff members shared the content of the letter with me. It reads in part: “Victory Gardens Theater (‘Victory Gardens’ or ‘VGT’) terminates your employment effective September 7, 2022. The termination is part of a general reduction in workforce due to the lack of business and operational needs, and a change in VGT’s business model such that your current position has been eliminated.” 

Reached for comment, Bo Frazier, the marketing manager at Victory Gardens (speaking on behalf of the entire staff) says they and the rest of the staff view VGT’s actions as part of “a union-busting tactic, given that the staff was pursuing wall-to-wall unionization through IATSE.” According to Frazier, nobody on the remaining staff had received any disciplinary warnings prior to their dismissal. When asked about Hingsbergen’s role at VG, they noted, “He signed the letter as chief executive, and I’ve never heard the title, ever. They hired an interim managing director from CR3, which is a transition management consulting firm. He did a report on the financial and operational standings. And at the end of that 30 days, we were told that this person, who we know as Bob, is coming on. We were never given his official title. We assumed that he was again another interim managing director.” 

Frazier notes that the staff members were emailed at midnight the night before requesting that they all come individually the next day for meetings. “[Hingsbergen] delivered this letter to me personally at the meeting,” Frazier says, and adds, “They gave no specifics [about the reasons for the firing]. All he did was read-quote from the letter. I did ask him what the board was going to do with the theater and I said, ‘Are they going to close the theater?’ And Bob said, ‘It’s unsure, but it’s looking very likely.ʼ” According to Frazier, Hingsbergen did not ask anyone to sign NDAs.

Frazier adds, “This whole thing is avoidable because we have a transition board assembled of 11 people who were willing to step in and take over. And now this board would rather see the theater shutter than see it go on under different management.” They also noted that the company had received “major six-figure grants” prior to the dismissal of Martin. “We were not in bad financial standing.” Frazier notes that the proposed slate of board members from the staff “came alongside a total of six figures in personal donations as well.”

Reached for comment, Martin sent the following statement: “I have always believed in putting people before institutions. My focus remains on caring for the staff and artists impacted by these decisions. The theatre community is already rallying to find these brilliant humans new jobs and engaging in mutual aid to support their transition. That is the only thing that matters.” 

Attempts to reach Harris for clarification on the current situation were unsuccessful. There is a GoFundMe for the fired VG staffers. Under the “Upcoming Events” section of the Victory Gardens website, there’s only the following: “No events to show.”

Read More