McVay to Step Down from Victory Gardens

BY Carrie L. Kaufman

McVay in VG's Clark St. office in 1974

After 34 years, Marcie McVay wants to do something else. That is, she doesn’t want to run Victory Gardens Theater anymore. So she’s announced that she’s stepping down sometime this fall.

McVay stresses that she’s not tired of working, and not tired of VG, but she never meant to be a theatre administrator. Her background is in social work and education, and she’d like to get back to that first love.

“I’ve loved e­very bit of this, I just think I would like to do something different,” says McVay.

McVay started at Victory Gardens as the first full-time employee. She did the books, worked the box office—all the things a single employee of a small theatre does. Cecil O’Neill was the producing director, and he didn’t take a salary at all. As time passed, VG started making more money, and O’Neill was replaced by artistic director Dennis Zacek (McVay’s husband) and associate artistic director Sandy Shinner. And McVay became managing director in 1981.

Then, in 2001, VG won the regional Tony Award, and the theatre’s trajectory flew higher than McVay, alone in the office in 1974, could have imagined.

Now, she feels she’s done all she can, though, she says, she hasn’t “quite come to terms with it all.” VG is putting together a search committee to find McVay’s replacement.