Jen Silverman in Five Plays

A three-time MacDowell fellow, two-time Blackburn Prize finalist, Lambda Literary Award finalist for their debut novel and a Scholar of Note at the American Library in Paris, Jen Silverman is an award-winning playwright, novelist and Oscar-qualified screenwriter. Known for their ability to write nuanced characters for women and queer actors across a variety of genres and styles, Silverman often explores social dynamics, personal histories and the nature of power in their plays. Occasionally, this skill across styles ventures into the realm of absurdism, be it through structural innovations like the scenes and monologues between five different women named Betty in Collective Rage (US/UK) or in wild characters, like the skinned cat taking revenge in Wink (US/UK).

Explore their range of innovative writing through a selection of five of their plays below, each of which bring an interesting yet complex character, bold comedy or poignant theme to life – all told through the unique voice of Jen Silverman.

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The Roommate (first premiered 2015, on Broadway in 2024) (US/UK)

Jen Silverman’s plays – like the works of many great playwrights – began in the regional theatre world before eventually making their way to larger platforms like Broadway. Their first play, The Roommate, first premiered at an influential new works festival known as the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2015, directed by Mike Donahue. While the famed festival shut down permanently in 2022 after its final festival in 2021, it – and its selection of plays and writers – still mark over 40 years of innovative work and theatrical creativity.

In the first example of Silverman’s detailed characters for women, this play chronicles the relationship and transformation of two women in their mid-to-late fifties who become unlikely roommates. Sharon, in her mid-fifties, is recently divorced and needs a roommate to share her Iowa home. Robyn, also in her mid-fifties, needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. But as Sharon begins to uncover Robyn’s secrets, they encourage her own deep-seated desire to transform her life completely in a dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life – and what happens when the wheels come off. Through this character study of a play, Silverman offers two roles for women beyond the ingenue, inviting audiences to see women of that age in a way that rejects their stereotypical portrayals as invisible and harmless for the chance to show that they are complex, mature, impactful and visible.

After seeing life in dozens of productions in regional theatres across the United States from Florida Studio Theatre to Steppenwolf, Silverman’s play premiered on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on September 12, 2024. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the characters of Sharon and Robyn were brought to life by Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone.

Collective Rage: A Play In 5 Betties (2016) (US/UK)

Silverman often brings their queer identity to the stage both in character and theme, and the queer fantasia that is this play encapsulates all of that and more. Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties is actually not even the complete title of the piece; the full title adds the subtitle 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. 

The hilarious play, which The New York Times called “a fult-tilt lesbian/bi-curious/genderqueer/Shakespearean comedy for everyone,” explores stereotyping, anger, sex, love and the “thea-tah” through the the experiences of five women named Betty. One Betty is rich; another Betty is lonely; that Betty’s busy working on her truck; this Betty wants to talk about love, but another Betty needs to hit something. And this Betty keeps using a small hand mirror to stare into parts of herself she’s never examined. Through each Betty, Jen Silverman has written a piece that is unapologetic, provocative, funny and full of women – and also queer women – that is for anyone who has been limited by the ways in which the world sees them and the internalization of that concept that follows. As the five Betties crash in to each other despite their differences, they connect through their discoveries of what actually makes them similar.

The play premiered in Washington, DC at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company – a regional theatre known for supporting daring and exciting new work – in September of 2016. Two years later, it opened off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on September 12, 2018. Produced by MCC Theater and directed by Mike Donahue (a collaborator you may recognize from the first production of The Roommate at the Humana Festival), the off-Broadway production featured Dana Delany, Lea DeLaria, Adina Verson, Ana Villafañe and Chaunté Wayans.

In the words of Silverman themself, “If you’re looking for a play that is talking about the world we’re in right now – but through a lens that is inclusive and inviting and joyful, then Collective Rage is the play for you.”

The Moors (2016) (US/UK)

Theatre requires a kind of intimacy between creatives and the audience, and Jen Silverman explores that notion well in many of her plays, especially through the lens of dark comedy. The pairing of humor with the circling of darker questions shines in The Moors.

In the play, two sisters and a dog live out their lives on the bleak English moors, dreaming of love and power. All hell breaks loose in this isolated house when the arrival of a hapless governess and a moor-hen set all three on a strange and dangerous path. A dark comedy about love, desperation and visibility. According to Silverman themself, “It’s a story of how we long to be seen, how we try to see each other and the consequences of mis-perceiving or being mis-perceived.” This intimacy of longing, for connection and for understanding, and its relationship to how we are perceived continues the questions explored in Collective Rage through the relationship between sisters and lovers.

Another notable feature of Silverman’s work is that they are deeply aware that theatre is a playground for creativity, especially with actors and designers. Their plays’ themes often focus on the importance of connection, and their unique characters and theatrical moments offer invitations for collaboration. In this play, the costume design of the dog and the moor-hen, the stage combat required to convey the chaos of the plot, and the combination of design needed to bring the setting of the house in the gloomy moors – and the undertones of the show’s themes – to life are just a few of the opportunities for designers and performers to innovate together.

The first production of The Moors premiered in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2016 under the direction of Jackson Gay. At a collegiate institution like Yale with students ranging from undergraduate to graduate and in disciplines from acting to design to direction to dramaturgy, Silverman’s plentiful opportunities for creative collaboration thrive. The play would later debut off-Broadway at the Duke on 42nd Street in February 2017 and see additional professional and amateur life across the country.

Spain (2023) (US/UK)

Interesting people who are interested in interesting things are interesting – and make interesting plays, as in Jen Silverman’s example. Playwrights are inherently curious people, and their curiosity often leads them to do reading and research for fun. In this instance, Jen Silverman applies their curiosity to a very real moment in history – how the documentary The Spanish Earth was funded by the Bureau of Propaganda of Stalinist Russia – and jumps off from it, using the frame of this historical moment to build a window into our current moment in time.

With this play, audiences 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 play about the art of propaganda and the dangerous, ongoing Disinformation Age explores how art can change the world – for better and worse.

Spain premiered off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on November 8, 2023. Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, the production featured Marin Ireland, Andrew Burnap, Zachary James, Erik Lochtefeld and Danny Wolohan. The play’s notable exploration of the thin line between art and propaganda, cost of being an artist in the world today and yet still the responsibility of being an artist in the world today is bitingly relevant in a world still facing the same questions.

Creditors, adapted from the original play by August Strindberg (2025) (US/UK)

In their newest play, Silverman flexes yet another stylistic creative muscle: the art of adaptation. Creditors, in its original iteration, was a naturalistic dramatic comedy written by the prolific Swedish playwright August Strindberg, often studied in theatre history courses for his ability to experiment with and successfully write plays in a range of dramatic methods, especially through expressionistic and surrealistic techniques. As explored in their past four plays, Silverman also possesses this varied skill in writing not just across theatrical styles and structures but across mediums, too, with their debut novel earning a finalist designation for the Lambda Literary Award and their screenwriting qualifying for an Oscar. Thus, a Silverman adaptation of a Strindberg play feels fitting.

Both the original and Silverman’s adaptation of the play follow Adi, a struggling painter, as he finds his creative spark reignited by Gustav, a magnetic stranger at an isolated seaside hotel. Their connection is instant and intimate, but what seems like a chance encounter quickly twists into something far darker, as Gustav becomes intrigued by Adi’s wife, the dazzling Tekla. Talk into the night devolves into an intricate web of deception, seduction and revelation, where the lives of all involved may be destroyed or transformed.

Silverman’s adaptation was praised by critics for its innovations that still retained the truth and meaning of the original. A writer at New York Theatre Guide remarked, “In updating the show for 2025, Silverman smartly makes this newfound conflict within Adi less about the innate roles of the sexes in relationships – ‘To love like a man is to give; to love like a woman is to take’ is a translated line from the original that’s excised here – and instead leaves those ideas implied. They talk more overtly about power in general, which each character has not a male or female, but simply human desire to cling to,” while the Charles Isherwood at the Wall Street Journal noted, “Despite the free hand taken with the text, Silverman hardly violates any meanings in the original. This Creditors remains a bruising exploration of how love can turn destructive, and how difficult it can be to exorcise the stalking ghosts of the past from any relationship, however healthy, however loving.”

Creditors premiered off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre on 10 May 2025. Directed by Ian Rickson, the production featured Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff and Justice Smith and can also be experienced as an Audible audibook.

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Other works by Jen Silverman include:

• Phoebe in Winter (2013) (US) – Jen’s first published play!
• Trick (2024) (US) – In this monologue, a mysterious being performs a life-altering magic trick. Part of the collection DARE: Scenes and Monologues for TNB2S+ Artists (US).
• Wink (2019) (US/UK) – A unhappy housewife, her breadwinning husband, an unorthodox therapist, and a skinned cat exacting revenge are the central figures in this dark comedy about the thin, thin line between savagery and civilization.
• Witch (2018) (US/UK) – An inventive retelling of a Jacobean drama, this sharp, subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by.

While much of their work is geared toward adult audiences and adult actors, Silverman also crafts creative characters for younger actors, too, such as:

• Pirates of the Cafeteria (2014) (US) – A swashbuckling short play for students.
• The Astonishing and Dangerous History of Mazefield the Frog (2015) (US/UK) – A one-act play written specially for teen actors as part of the Keen Teens program at the Keen Company.

Concord Theatricals also licenses an entire collection of short plays by Silverman that offer younger actors the chance to bring absurd comedy and characters to life.

Real American Dinner Party & Other Short Plays (US/UK) is this dynamic collection of five absurdist, hilarious, provocative plays exploring everything from power to loneliness to menstruating hippos. The collection contains:

Real American Dinner Party (US/UK) – Sometimes you lose your keys, sometimes you lose your temper, and sometimes you lose the most unexpected of things. A particularly tense dinner party can change everything in the blink of an eye.

Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure (US/UK) – On Thanksgiving, a nervous male zookeeper is overwhelmed by three female hippos, who all get their periods. While the zookeeper, his girlfriend and his co-worker decide who is on clean-up, the hippos interrogate the nature of ambition.

The Visitations (US/UK) – Dana has been alone in her home for a bit too long. Either she is losing it or she is having an increasingly intimate relationship with a ghost.

Ubu Anew (A Play for Strange People) (US/UK) – A shortened and extremely loose adaptation of Ubu Roi, featuring Pixy Stix and Hillary Clinton.

Your Mother in the Night Sky (US/UK) – In this short play, your mother leaves a voicemail, the strangest voicemail you’ve ever received.

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To read or license a play by Jen Silverman, visit Concord Theatricals in the US or the UK.