Victory Gardens Theater's recently...

Victory Gardens Theater's recently made known home at the landmark Biograph Theatre, 2433 N Lincoln, is now in its budding stage.

To celebrate the impending readiness of the $113 million overhaul of the Biograph -- to be the household of Victory Gardens' American Center for strange Plays -- it has scheduled an make open house Sept. 9 and 10 with issues designed to help both longtime followers and the public at large to become familiar with the novel facility.

The space will not be full finished for another month, unless visitors will be given behind-the-scenes tours each 45 minutes, and there will be a sneak peek at spectacles from the coming season's offerings at 2:45 and 4 pm the two days.

A panel of Victory Gardens playwrights also is slated for 1:15 pm forward both days, and there will be a signing in honor of Northwestern University Press' just discovered release of the book Victory Gardens Theater Presents: Seven novel Plays From the Playwrights total effect (1 p.m. Sept. 9). Music, sample classes and emancipated food will be in the mix.

For details, move to www.victorygardens.org.

In other theater news:

- Tony Award winner Ben Vereen (now appearing in the film "Idlewild") will test out his new Broadway-bound one-man exhibit to "Ben Vereen Sings Sammy Davis Jr" forward Sept. 15 at Skokie's middle East/ North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets: (847) 673- 6300

- "The Visit," the Kander and degeneracy musical originally directed at the Goodman Theatre according to Frank Galati -- with Chita Rivera starring as a wealthy woman hellbent forward revenge -- will be revived by means of Galati (with Rivera again starring) at the Signature Theatre, the closely watched company in Arlington, Va. It will move Sept. 4-Oct. 14, 2007.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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