Leigh Silverman is an American director for the stage, both off-Broadway and on Broadway. She was nominated for the 2014 and 2024 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the musicals Violet and Suffs , and the 2008 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for the play From Up Here.
Silverman was born in Rockville, Maryland, went to high school in Washington, D.C., and attended Carnegie Mellon University, earning a BFA in Directing and an MFA in Playwriting. [1] [2]
Upon graduation, she had an internship at the New York Theatre Workshop. Silverman said "I can say, without a doubt, that most, if not all, of my important theatrical relationships came out of my time with New York Theater Workshop." [3]
Silverman directed the Lisa Kron play Well off-Broadway at The Public Theater; the play ran from March 2004 to May 2004. She also directed Well on Broadway in 2006. Among other awards, the play was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding Off-Broadway Play. She directed Kron's play In the Wake in its premiere engagement at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, California in March 2010. [4] She directed In the Wake at the Public Theater in November 2010. [5]
She has directed many plays off-Broadway, including Blue Door by Tanya Barfield in 2006 at Playwrights Horizons, for which she was nominated for the Audelco Award, Best Director. The New York Times reviewer wrote that the play was "directed with care by Leigh Silverman." [6] She directed From Up Here, by Liz Flahive at The Manhattan Theatre Club's off-Broadway City Center Stage I in 2008 [7] and received a 2008 Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play. [8] She directed David Greenspan's Go Back to Where You Are at the off-Broadway Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater, opening in March 2011. [9] She received the 2011 Obie Award, as director, for Go Back to Where You Are and In the Wake. [10] [11]
On Broadway, she was the Associate Director for the musical Never Gonna Dance in 2003. She directed Chinglish by David Henry Hwang at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago in June to July 2011 [12] and on Broadway in October 2011. [13] She was nominated for the Joseph Jefferson Awards as Director of the Goodman Theatre production of Chinglish. [14]
Silverman directed the premiere of Hansol Jung's Cardboard Piano at the 2016 Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. [15] She directed the revival of the musical Violet on Broadway for the Roundabout Theatre Company in 2013 and received a Tony Award nomination as Best Director. [16] The USAToday reviewer wrote that the musical was "quietly affecting and lovingly staged by director Leigh Silverman." [17]
Silverman directed Bright Half Life, a new play by Tanya Barfield at the off-Broadway Women's Project Theatre in February 2015. This is the third time Silverman and Barfield have worked together. [18] (She previously directed Barfield's The Call in 2013 and Blue Door in 2006.)
She directed the world premiere of the Neil Labute play The Way We Get By at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theatre, which opened on May 19, 2015, and closed on June 21. The cast starred Thomas Sadoski and Amanda Seyfried. [19] [20] [21] She directed the Encores! Off-Center production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party in July 2015, starring Sutton Foster and Steven Pasquale. [22] She directed another LaBute play, All the Ways to Say I Love You, which ran off-Broadway from September 28, 2016 to October 23, 2016 and starred Judith Light in this solo play. [23] [24] [25]
She directed the off-Broadway revival of the musical Sweet Charity , which started at the Pershing Square Signature Center on November 2, 2016 (previews) and ran through December 23. The musical starred Sutton Foster. [26]
For the Roundabout Theatre's Underground, she directed On the Exhale by Martin Zimmerman, which premiered off-Broadway at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre on February 7, 2017 (previews), and ran through April 2. This one-woman play starred Marin Ireland. [27]
In 2017 she also directed the world-premiere of Hurricane Diane by Madeleine George at the Two River Theater in New Jersey. The cast included Mia Barron (Sandy Fleischer), Becca Blackwell (Diane), Nikiya Mathis (Renee Shapiro-Epps), Danielle Skraastad (Pam Annunziata) and Kate Wetherhead (Beth Wann). [28] In September of the same year, Silverman directed the world-premiere of Hansol Jung's Wild Goose Dreams at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. [29]
In 2018, for the Minetta Lane Theatre she directed the monologue Harry Clarke by David Cale with Billy Crudup in the title role. [30]
She also directed the world premiere of David Henry Hwang's musical Soft Power at the Ahmanson Theatre in from May to June 2018. The production was presented by Center Theatre Group in association with East West Players, and featured music by Jeanine Tesori as well as choreography by Sam Pinkleton. [31]
In 2022, Silverman was featured in the book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, with a profile written by theatre scholar Bess Rowen. [32]
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Well is a play by Lisa Kron. It concerns relationships between mothers and daughters and "wellness", among other themes. It ran Off-Broadway in 2004 and then on Broadway in 2006.
Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
Francis Jue is an American actor and singer. Jue is known for his performances on Broadway, in national tours, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area and at The Muny in St. Louis. His roles in plays and musicals range from Shakespeare to Rodgers and Hammerstein to David Henry Hwang. He is also known for his recurring role on the TV series Madam Secretary (2014–2019).
Emily Skinner, also known as Emily Scott Skinner, is a Tony-nominated American actress and singer. She has played leading roles in 11 Broadway productions including New York, New York, Prince of Broadway, The Cher Show, Side Show, Jekyll & Hyde, James Joyce's The Dead, The Full Monty, Dinner at Eight, Billy Elliot, as well as the Actor's Fund Broadway concerts of Dreamgirls and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She has sung on concert stages around the world and on numerous recordings.
Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.
Jayne Houdyshell is an American actress. Known for being a prolific character actor in theater, film, and television, Houdyshell has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, two Obie Awards, and a Drama Desk Award.
Annie Baker is an American playwright and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.
Tanya Barfield is an American playwright whose works have been presented both nationally and internationally.
David Cromer is an American theatre director, and stage, film, and TV actor. He has received recognition for his work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in his native Chicago. Cromer has won or been nominated for numerous awards, including winning the Lucille Lortel Award and Obie Award for his direction of Our Town. He was nominated for the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for his direction of The Adding Machine. In 2018, Cromer won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for The Band's Visit.
Marion Isaac McClinton was an American theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was nominated for the Tony Award for King Hedley II. He won the 2000 Vivian Robinson Audelco Black Theatre Awards, Director/Dramatic Production and the 1999–2000 Obie Awards, Direction, for Jitney, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award.
Chinglish is a play by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang. It is a comedy about an American businessman desperate to launch a new enterprise in China, which opened on Broadway in 2011 with direction by Leigh Silverman.
Jordan Harrison is an American playwright. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His play Marjorie Prime was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Fun Home is a musical theatre adaptation of Alison Bechdel's 2006 graphic memoir of the same name, with music by Jeanine Tesori, and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron. The story concerns Bechdel's discovery of her own lesbian sexuality, her relationship with her closeted gay father, and her attempts to unlock the mysteries surrounding his life. It is told in a series of non-linear vignettes connected by narration provided by the adult Alison character.
Rachel Chavkin is an American stage director best known for directing the musicals Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and Hadestown, receiving nominations for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for both and winning for Hadestown in 2019.
Michael Louis Chernus is an American actor. He has acted on film, television, and the stage. He is perhaps best known for his role as Cal Chapman on the Netflix original comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019). Chernus played Phineas Mason / Tinkerer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: Homecoming, which was released on July 7, 2017.
Sam Gold is an American theater director and actor. Having studied at Cornell University and Juilliard School he became known for directing both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He has received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, a Tony nomination for Best Director of a Play, and nominations for four Drama Desk Awards.
Heidi Schreck is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actress from Wenatchee, Washington. Her play What the Constitution Means to Me, which she also performs in, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Awards for 2019 Best Play and Best Actress in a Play.
Hansol Jung is a South Korean translator and playwright. Jung is a recipient the Whiting Award in drama and three of her plays were listed on the 2015 Kilroys' List. Jung is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writers' Lab and was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. In addition to writing several plays, Jung has also written for the television series Tales Of the City.
Suffs is a stage musical with book, music, and lyrics by Shaina Taub, based on suffragists and the American women's suffrage movement, focusing primarily on the historical events leading up to the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the United States constitution in 1920 that gave some women, primarily white women the right to vote. It premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in April 2022.