Theater Wit announced this afternoon that it will stage monologuist Mike Daisey’s newest work, The Trump Card, in the closing days of the presidential election. Daisey has released the script, which (you guessed it) takes on Candidate Donald Trump, “open source” style for productions after he performed it this summer in Washington, D.C. and New York. It's not yet known who will perform Theater Wit’s version, which will be helmed by artistic director Jeremy Wechsler for a run from October 5 through election night, November 8, with performance times and ticket prices also still to be announced. Daisey himself has appeared in Chicago to perform previous monologues at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Victory Gardens.
Also newly added to Theater Wit’s slate is the very meta holiday show This Way Outta Santaland. The new solo piece is written and performed by Mitchell Fain, and centers on Fain’s eight-year run playing David Sedaris in Theater Wit’s perennial production of The Santaland Diaries, which is itself about Sedaris’s time working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. It’s set to run November 23–December 23.
Finally, Wechsler will work with playwright Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns, a post-electric play) on the Chicago premiere of Washburn’s 10 Out of 12, which invites audiences into the experience of a technical rehearsal for a play, to run March 3–April 23. The three new productions join Wit’s previously announced season opener, the Chicago premiere of Mat Smart’s suburban-set Naperville, which runs August 26–October 16.