Best Playwright, Reader's Choice: Emily Schwartz and Marisa Wegrzyn

Jason Creps

Reader’s Choice

Emily Schwartz and Marisa Wegrzyn (tie)

This town’s been all about Tracy Letts lately, but two young playwrights might give him a run for his Pulitzer Prize money. Emily Schwartz’s Mr. Spacky . . . The Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves delivered more laughs per minute than anything I saw all last year, and her bold, silly Cowboy Birthday Party was the highlight of this year’s Collaboraction Sketchbook Festival. Meanwhile, Marisa Wegrzyn had two very different scripts produced by Theatre Seven in 2007: Diversey Harbor, a poignant play-in-monologues about postcollegiate Chicagoans grappling with tragedy, and Killing Women, a take-no-prisoners black comedy about a hit woman recruiting a single mom. There’s nothing wan or cutesy about the way these two write (if you hate Sarah Ruhl, you’ll love them), but neither do they keep reminding us How Rotten People Are (are you listening, Neil LaBute?).  Schwartz’s The Mysterious Elephant runs through 7/19, Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, no show Thu-Fri 7/3-7/4, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-598-8240, $20. Wegrzyn’s Psalms of a Questionable Nature runs through 6/29, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark, 773-334-7728, $15-$20. —Kerry Reid

Readers’ Choice

Tracy Letts

 Letts’s new play Superior Donuts previews through 6/28, Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sat also 3 PM, and opens 6/29, Sun 6 PM. Through 8/17 it runs Tue-Sun 7:30 PM, Sat and Sun 3 PM, Wed, 6/30-8/13, 2 PM, no show Sun 7:30 PM 8/3-17, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, downstairs theater, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, $20-$68.

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