Gary Slezak grew up on Chicago’s Southwest Side and began writing plays as an undergraduate at Western Illinois University. There his first play was produced, a political satire entitled EVERY FOURTH NOVEMBER. After college, he wrote and produced SKETCHER IN THE WRY, an evening of short plays at The Body Politic.  “Punctuated with enough good laughs to fill the 70-seat theater for the rest of its February run… Slezak takes us on an impressionistic and highly entertaining romp among alternative solutions to the problem of the meaning of life.” (The Reader)

MALEK’S DEPENDENTS, a play set in a South Side liquor store, was developed at Victory Gardens and produced with an Equity cast by the People’s Light and Theatre Company, where it received excellent reviews in the Baltimore Sun and Philadelphia Daily News.  “Slezak has taken four stock characters and breathed life into them… the superior acting ensemble keeps the script pumping with verisimilitude… we come away roundly entertained and tasting of the bittersweet elixir of life all the way home.”  MALEK’S DEPENDENTS was later selected as a semi-finalist for a Jerome Fellowship.

BEAT THE JESTER, a dark comedy presented in an Equity production at Chicago Dramatists in 2004, was recommended by the Sun Times as “a searing drama, a potent brew of political intrigue, sibling rivalry and Oedipal passions… the play slips a scalpel into some unexpectedly raw corners of our psyche, darkening along the way to a grim meditation on family ties.”   The Tribune critic wrote, “This is nobly ambitious writing.” “Refreshingly strange, part dark comedy, part morality play, part who-dun-it, delivers enough twists to satisfy…tremendous,”  wrote Tom Williams, recommending the play.

SLAPHAPPY, a farce set in a Paris hotel, played in a well-received Equity production at Theatre Building Chicago in 2009. Richard Shavzin directed.  “Grand mischief…well thought out and beautifully delivered... truly amazes.”   (Chicago Free Press) “Briskly paced and breezily acted… calls to mind Noel Coward’s PRIVATE LIVES… a multitude of door slamming farcical high jinks…as staunchly, effortlessly insubstantial as it should be… a playwright who makes it all look easy.”   (Time Out Chicago) “Slezak is good at delivering wry, dry one-liners and the cast good at delivering them, especially Judy Blue as a tippling American divorcee and Lucas Neff as a Parisian bellboy with sidelines in therapy and terrorism.”  (The Reader) “Fast-paced mayhem… generous optimism and universal hope.”   (Windy City Times) “Our Best Bet.”   (Tribune)

More recent full-length plays include PLAYHOUSE, HURRY SLOWLY and HAVERLY. PLAYHOUSE and HURRY SLOWLY were developed in staged readings directed by Richard Shavzin. Both plays were staged during the playwright’s two-year fellowship at Chicago Dramatists. The cast members included Chicago Equity actors Judy Blue, Doug McKechnie, Chuck Stransky, Mary Mulligan, Jurgen Hooper, Michelle Schupe, and new-comer Charlie Wein.

PLAYHOUSE was later selected as a semi-finalist by the National Playwright’s Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. HURRY SLOWLY was singled-out by the O’Neill the following year. HAVERLY is still in development.

Since publication in 2021 of "The Christmas War",  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735401978?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860      Mr. Slezak has devoted more time to writing short stories. New stories were added to this website in 2023. More will appear during the year.

Gary Slezak’s work life has included positions at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University Library.