Early on in Jen Silverman’s novel We Play Ourselves, the narrator ruminates on the nonpareil thrill of being part of the “collective witnessing organism” of a theater audience: “When I’m in a theatre I feel held. I feel simultaneously very safe and like something very dangerous is about to happen, and that dangerous thing is the wall of my chest peeling back—slowly, so slowly, in time with the curtain rising.... It’s the sort of feeling that becomes a constant longing. It’s the sort of longing upon which you build an entire life.”
Silverman, who is in their 30s, is a prolific playwright, novelist, and screenwriter who uses they/them pronouns. They’ve built their entire life around that elusive feeling.Their plays include a Brontë-inspired confection featuring a philosophical mastiff and a doomed governess (The Moors); a riotous play centered on a quintet of characters all named Betty (Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties); a noirish drama about a pair of filmmakers working on a propagandistic movie about the Spanish Civil War (Spain); and The Roommate, Silverman’s Broadway debut. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the two-hander starring Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone started previews Thursday night at the Booth Theatre. The play follows two women with drastically different personalities who move in together and have to relearn ways of cohabitating after several years on their own.
