Victory Gardens Presents DISCONNECT, Opening 1/25

Victory Gardens continues its 2012-13 season with the American Premiere of Disconnect, written by Anupama Chandrasekhar and directed by Ann Filmer. The production runs January 25 – February 24, 2013 at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Park. The Press Opening is Monday, February 4, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.

Forty-something Avinash is hopelessly out of step in a debt collection agency that demands success, energy, and youth. To bring his game up, he is transferred to work with the bright young graduates in Illinois-down on the fourth floor. In the windowless, nighttime offices of a call center in Chennai, India, is a bustling world of energetic Indian workers dreaming the American Dream and faking U.S. accents to target their American "marks" maxed out on credit cards. Anupama Chandrasekhar's Disconnect is a powerful and witty drama about the consequences of consumer culture and the intricacies of our interconnected global economy.

Disconnect had its world premiere at The Royal Court Theatre in 2010. The Victory Gardens production marks its American Premiere. The Independent called Disconnect "the Glengarry Glen Ross of our day."

"While I was at Sundance last year, I made a good friend of British director Indhu Rubasingham, recently the Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre in London. When I told her of my appointment at Victory Gardens, she immediately sent me Anupama Chandrashekhar's Disconnect. I knew this smart, funny, bittersweet and very observant play needs to be experienced in Chicago. In this poignant study of credit and debt culture in America, Anu has vividly portrayed the complex lives of non-descript voices we often hear when we call customer service, and our interconnected relationship with a country and its people continents away. I'm also very pleased to welcome one of off-loop Chicago's most exciting directors, Ann Filmer, to lead an all-South Asian cast in this American Premiere," says Artistic Director Chay Yew.

The cast of Disconnect includes Minita Gandhi (Vidya), Behzad Dabu (Giri), Kamal J. Hans (Avinash), Arya Daire (Jyothi), Teresa Kuruvila (US), Owais Ahmed (US), and Debargo Sanyal (Ross).