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GARY SLEZAK
(Playwright, Producer) grew up on Chicago's Southside and began
writing plays as an undergraduate at Western Illinois
University. There his first play was produced, a political
satire entitled Every Fourth November. Sketcher in the Wry,
an evening of short plays, followed at Body Politic. Malek's
Dependents, a play set in a Southside liquor store, was
developed at Victory Gardens and produced by The People's Light
and Theatre Company, where it received excellent reviews in The
Baltimore Sun and Philadelphia Daily News. Mr. Slezak wrote and
produced Beat the Jester at Chicago Dramatists in 2004,
which was well-received by The Reader and The Onion, recommended
by Chicago Stage Talk Radio and described by the Chicago
Sun-Times as "a searing drama…a potent brew of political
intrigue, sibling rivalry and Oedipal passions." Other
full-length plays include One if by Land, Two if by Sea; The
Measure of All Things, Night at the Century and Entering
Paris. Recent short plays include Five Stages of
Drunkeness, Paindude, Leonard Bernstein's Birthday, and
The Christmas War. Gary Slezak is also the author of
published fiction and non-fiction, and has been a finalist for a
Jerome Fellowship. He works on the Chicago campus of
Northwestern University. |
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| *RICHARD SHAVZIN
(Director) was the Artistic Director of Strawdog Theatre Company
from 1993-1998, where he received a Jeff Award for Direction of
Burn This. Also at Strawdog, he directed the world
premiere production of Studs Terkels' Race, as well as
the Jeff-Nominated productions of Criminal Hearts;
Cat's –Paw; The Big Funk; A Mother, A Daughter and
A Gun; Skeletons; and Hurlyburly. Other
directing credits include the Chicago premiere of Gary Slezak's
Beat the Jester at Chicago Dramatists in 2004, Vick's
Boy for American Theater Company, Endangered for
Stage Left's Leapfest, and the world premieres of Tops or
Bottoms and Fallout (Canamac Productions),
Changing Rainbows (Red Wolf Theatre), Klub Kokomo (PS
Theatricals), and the workshop production of Any Someone At
All at Second City's Skybox Theater. Mr. Shavzin was awarded
a special Jeff for creating the Unified non-Equity General
Auditions. As Resident Director for Cienstory's First Read at
Second City, he directed new screenplays by Groundhog Day
author Danny Rubin, Jay Stapleton, and Big Night
co-author Joe Tropiano. Richard Shavzin served on the Board of
Directors of the League of Chicago Theatres from 1994-2000, and
served two terms on the Theatre Peer Review Panel of the City of
Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. He is currently on the
Central Board of Actors Equity, and is a Vice-President of the
AFTRA Chicago local. |
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*ADAM GANDERSON (Stage Manager)
is new to Chicago but has already worked on several notable productions,
including A Christmas Story (Noble Fool Theatricals), Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (Northlight
Theatre), Cadillac (Chicago Dramatists), and Don Giovanni (Chicago Opera
Theatre). Other regional work includes Misery and the Bomb-itty of Errors
(Syracuse Stage), Pride and Prejudice (Dallas Theatre Center) and Dance of the
Holy Ghosts (Yale Repertory Theatre). Mr. Ganderson holds a B.S in Mechanical
Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MFA in Stage
Management from the Yale School of Drama.
* Member of Actor's Equity Association
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