SPAIN
(1f, 4m)Step into a sophisticated, slippery world where the line between truth and fiction is all in the packaging. It's 1936, and a pair of passionate filmmakers have landed their next big project: a sweeping Spanish Civil War film with the potential to change American hearts and minds. It just happens to be bankrolled by the KGB. This seductive and funny new play about the art of propaganda and the dangerous ongoing Disinformation Age explores how art can change the world—for better and worse.Second Stage Theater Premiere:
The New Yorker (Vinson Cunningham)
The New Yorker (Helen Shaw)
HIGHWAY PATROL
(2f, 1m)TIMESTAMP: October, 2012: “@DanaDelany, Are you married? If not, I’d marry you.” When Cam, a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation captures actress Dana Delany’s attention on Twitter, she’s quickly swept into an intense, around-the-clock online friendship. But when Cam starts receiving messages from beyond, Dana is thrust into a world where unexpected revelations raise the question of how far we go to love and be loved. A strange thriller—part love story, part ghost story—crafted from thousands of Dana’s saved tweets, emails, and DMs.The Goodman Theater Premiere:
THE MOORS
(5f, 1m)Two sisters and a dog live out their lives on the bleak English moors, and dream of love and power. The arrival of a hapless governess and a moor-hen set all three on a strange and dangerous path. The Moors is a dark comedy about love, desperation, and visibility.American Theatre Magazine (David Adjmi)
THE ROOMMATE
(2f)Sharon, in her mid-50s, is recently divorced and needs a roommate to share her Iowa home. Robin, also in her mid-50s, needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. But as Sharon begins to uncover Robin's secrets, they encourage her own deep-seated desire to transform her life completely. A dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life - and what happens when the wheels come off.WINK
(1f, 3m)Sofie is an unhappy housewife. Gregor is her bread-winning husband. Dr. Franz is their psychiatrist. Wink is the cat. And Gregor has just skinned the cat. A dark comedy about the thin, thin line between savagery and civilization.
WITCH
(2f, 4m)A charming devil arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes. Elizabeth should be his easiest target, having been labeled a “witch” and cast out by the town, but her soul is not so readily bought. A darkly comedic retelling of a Jacobean drama, this subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by.The LA Times (Ashley Lee)
COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES; IN ESSENCE A QUEER AND OCCASIONALLY HAZARDOUS EXPLORATION; DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND YOU READ ABOUT SHACKLETON AND HOW HE EXPLORED THE ANTARCTIC?; IMAGINE THE ANTARCTIC AS A PUSSY AND IT’S SORT OF LIKE THAT
(5f)Betty is rich; Betty is lonely; Betty’s busy working on her truck; Betty wants to talk about love, but Betty needs to hit something. And Betty keeps using a small hand mirror to stare into parts of herself she’s never examined. Five different women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex, and the “thea-tah.”
PHOEBE IN WINTER
(2f, 4m)When three brothers return home from a distant war, they prepare to settle into their old lives. But a knock at the door yields a girl named Phoebe who accuses them of killing her own three brothers, and demands reparations. As Phoebe's presence changes the very structure of their family, a war that was once far away now threatens to re-ignite inside their home.More On The Plays
Alexis Soloski for the New York Times: “Working in TV, Jen Silverman Wrote a Novel. About Theater.”
Celia Wren for the Washington Post
Rhoda Feng for Air Mail
Ashley Lee for the LA Times on WITCH at the Geffen
In conversation with Amy Levinson on WITCH with The Geffen
The New Yorker on Spain (Vinson Cunningham)
The New Yorker on Spain (Helen Shaw)
Chicago Tribune Feature on Highway Patrol
Chicago Sun-Times Feature on Highway Patrol
American Theatre Magazine Feature on Highway Patrol
In conversation on THE MOORS with David Adjmi for American Theatre Magazine
In conversation on THE MOORS with Elissa Blake for Audrey Journal, Australia
Neha Kale on THE MOORS for The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
In conversation on WINK with Anthony Skuse for Audrey Journal, Australia
In conversation on WINK with Esaú Mora for Basement Theatre, New Zealand
In conversation with Ely Kreimendahl for Shame Spiral
Selected Press
If you’re wondering whether you’ll enjoy the revolution, Collective Rage makes an excellent (and hilarious) test case.
—Jesse Green, New York Times Critic’s Pick
[The Moors is] a kinky, brilliant homage…a scintillating engagement that flits between gothic spoof, fen-sucked fabulism and queer bodice-ripper…Bizarre and raunchy, subversive and disturbing, and deliciously funny all at once.
—Sydney Morning Herald
The Moors rolls out like the stuff of dreams, with telling passages heightened by surrealistic flights of fancy…Deep and grim yet playfully buoyant.
—The New York Times
Silverman is an observant, lyrical and kind writer, generous to all and without any notes of condescension in [their] writing. For all the deviance, [The Roommate]’s ambitions remain rooted to the study of its characters.
—Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune
Silverman isn’t interested in the dull details of conventional storytelling…Delicious [and] surreal. …A play that gives two noningénues strange [and] meaty roles.
—Jesse Green, The New York Times on The Roommate
In its wryly unassuming way, “The Roommate” is laced with insights into how a lifetime’s accumulation of frustrations and disappointments can erupt into the kind of rebellion that only seems out of character to those who aren’t paying attention.
—The Boston Globe
Slyly subversive…a keen intelligence…Silverman is an emerging talent to be reckoned with. Particularly impressive is [their] unsentimental insight into the risks of radical reinvention.
—The Los Angeles Times on The Roommate
[Spain] is, above all, about the sometimes terrifying power of art—how it can be used to change...the minds and hearts of a social set, or a generational cohort, or, God forbid, an entire mass-media-hypnotized populace. Art matters, whether artists like that fact or not.
—Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker
The idea that art might be a cat’s-paw was also crucial to Silverman’s superb novel “We Play Ourselves,” in which a disaffected theatre artist joins a charismatic documentarian’s circle in Los Angeles. What roles do we devise, and at whose invisible command? The camera lens, Silverman tells us, is a mirror, too.
—Helen Shaw, The New Yorker (Spotlight) on Spain
[Witch is] shrewd and passionate… Fascinating and intense… We’ve heard this same story retold for hundreds of years with male parties: How does the equation change when the Faustian bargain must be made by a woman?
—Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune
Marvelous … Jen Silverman’s exceedingly smart new comedy casts an intoxicating spell.
—Chicago Sun Times on Witch
Silverman’s dialogue accomplishes so much, so succinctly, that it establishes itself right away as the biggest star of the Geffen Playhouse’s starry production.
—The Los Angeles Times on Witch
Ms. Silverman has created a modern fairy tale, a little bad wolf whose lopsided grin reveals its crooked, bloody teeth.
—The New York Times on Phoebe in Winter
Silverman's play makes the term "black humour" seem pallid. This is riotous comedy... [Their] audacity has you wincing and snorting.
—Sydney Morning Herald on Wink
Jen Silverman [has] written a diamond. A hard, sharp, lustrous thing made from the bones of what came before…This is what theater can be and this is what it can do. This play will change your life.
—New City on Witch
