The silent auction
Photo: BizBash
Victory Gardens Theater's annual Chicago Stories benefit has followed the same format for several years: Three notable Chicago natives—who, in the past, have included everyone from TV stars to novelists—write short plays especially for the occasion and attend the event. Actors (usually from Victory Gardens) perform the plays on stage after a multicourse dinner, with fund-raising efforts taking place throughout the night.
For this year's benefit, held on Friday night at downtown's Four Seasons, Victory Gardens director of special events and individual giving Kate Oczkowski stuck to the affair's tried-and-true formula. She called on Illinois-born comedian Jeff Garlin (a cast member of Curb Your Enthusiasm and one of the evening's guest playwrights) to provide the Chicago-centric star power and arranged live and silent auctions that helped to raise $68,000 for the theater.Notably absent from the benefit was a surplus of lavish decor. The preexisting features of the hotel's grand ballroom (think crystal chandeliers and walls lined in peach silk) provided much of the atmosphere during a dinner of chicken and salmon. The floral arrangements on each dinner table —pale pink roses arranged by a member of the Victory Gardens committee—sold for $20 a pop, providing last-minute Mother's Day gifts for some and gently bolstering the evening's proceeds.
Fund-raising efforts continued with a silent auction whose tables spanned several rooms outside the grand ballroom and comprised categories like sports and jewelry. A live auction featured the top-selling Curb Your Enthusiasm package, which included a walk-on role on the HBO show. Jeff Garlin helped introduce the package ("[If you win this] it'll be better than you expected, but not as good as you'd hoped," he deadpanned), and it sold for $21,000.
Following the live auction, the three 10-minute plays—authored by Garlin, novelist Stuart Dybeck, and Allen Turner (chairman of the board of trustees at Columbia College of Chicago)—unfolded back-to-back on the ballroom stage. To thank the guest playwrights, Victory Gardens director Dennis Zacek announced that each of them would have a seat in the Biograph Theater (where Victory Gardens plays are performed) dedicated to them. The seat dedication was new to the benefit this year.
For this year's benefit, held on Friday night at downtown's Four Seasons, Victory Gardens director of special events and individual giving Kate Oczkowski stuck to the affair's tried-and-true formula. She called on Illinois-born comedian Jeff Garlin (a cast member of Curb Your Enthusiasm and one of the evening's guest playwrights) to provide the Chicago-centric star power and arranged live and silent auctions that helped to raise $68,000 for the theater.Notably absent from the benefit was a surplus of lavish decor. The preexisting features of the hotel's grand ballroom (think crystal chandeliers and walls lined in peach silk) provided much of the atmosphere during a dinner of chicken and salmon. The floral arrangements on each dinner table —pale pink roses arranged by a member of the Victory Gardens committee—sold for $20 a pop, providing last-minute Mother's Day gifts for some and gently bolstering the evening's proceeds.
Fund-raising efforts continued with a silent auction whose tables spanned several rooms outside the grand ballroom and comprised categories like sports and jewelry. A live auction featured the top-selling Curb Your Enthusiasm package, which included a walk-on role on the HBO show. Jeff Garlin helped introduce the package ("[If you win this] it'll be better than you expected, but not as good as you'd hoped," he deadpanned), and it sold for $21,000.
Following the live auction, the three 10-minute plays—authored by Garlin, novelist Stuart Dybeck, and Allen Turner (chairman of the board of trustees at Columbia College of Chicago)—unfolded back-to-back on the ballroom stage. To thank the guest playwrights, Victory Gardens director Dennis Zacek announced that each of them would have a seat in the Biograph Theater (where Victory Gardens plays are performed) dedicated to them. The seat dedication was new to the benefit this year.
