Keep Marching On! A Conversation with Broadway Director Leigh Silverman
If you thought 2024 was a busy year for the two-time Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, just wait. As the director of 60 world premiere new plays and musicals, including the outstanding Broadway musical Suffs, Silverman has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. On February 15 in front of a captivated audience, she talked about several exciting projects she has coming up, reflected on her career, and provided valuable advice to attentive students on using art to cope with our country’s current events.
Photo by Karl Rabe
The one-hour, in-depth conversation was moderated by Assistant Professor of Drama Amanda Culp. It was sponsored by the Capotorto and Mulas Family Lecture Fund in Drama, Film, and Medicine-Related Sciences. Silverman has worked with the New York Stage and Film’s Summer Residency, where she’s been directing since 2003, and spent three summers at Vassar working with the New York Theatre Workshop.
“I only ever wanted to be a theater director and I live in a constant state of anxiety that I won’t get to do it tomorrow or that nobody is going to hire me,” said Silverman. Her impressive career has already spanned more than 20 years. Culp advised attendees to scan her complete bio because “it is like taking a guided tour through the landscape of American theater.”
Silverman was one of the youngest women ever to direct a Broadway show—there had only been six when she began her career. “A lot has changed in those years as there have now been 10 women directors and one woman of color, but more progress is needed,” she said.
Silverman has been a self-proclaimed theater nerd since she was young. Her love of the stage led her to a summer theater camp during high school where the teacher told her she was terrible at acting. “But she also told me I was really smart and should be a director,” said Silverman. “She asked me to assist her in directing for the summer. I felt special and seen.”
That experience led her to study directing at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “But something was missing and I wanted to work with writers, so I applied for the playwriting program,” she said. “I learned directing through playwriting and craft and talking about character and structure. I felt what it was like to be forced to write when no words are coming to you and what it’s like to bring work to people in a room and have them just look at you.”
It was at this moment that Silverman realized she wanted to be in the conversations about making new work.
After graduation, she interned at the New York Theatre Workshop, fostering many relationships that helped her throughout her career. “I listened, watched, and absorbed in awe and it became my artistic home,” she said. “Many of my friends and closest collaborators I met in the first ten years of my artistic life came through the door at New York Theatre Workshop.”
Culp asked Silverman how she knows when a collaboration is right. “You don’t always,” she responded, describing her first meeting with playwright David Henry Hwang as ‘similar to the most awkward terrible first date.’ “Afterward, I was so disappointed,” said Silverman. “He called the next day and said I don’t think you understand my play, but the way you talked about what you saw makes me feel that you are the right collaborator. You get where I need to go.”
Silverman became director of Hwan’s Yellow Face, which played on Broadway from September to November 2024 at Roundabout Theatre Company.
After a lengthy discussion about the evolution of Suffs (a musical that chronicles a period in the American women’s suffrage movement and portrays quite a few Vassar alums) and other aspects of her storied theater career, Culp asked Silverman how the students could handle the palpable fear they have about what’s going on in the arts. Silverman told the students that it was time for the counterculture of art.
“I think this could be an amazing time in the arts because we can’t take anything for granted,” she said. “I feel that the importance of theater and live art experiences take on more relevancy and urgency, not just in terms of what they’re about, but in terms of gathering with people. We need community. We need each other. We need to bolster each other. We need to have reasons to come together, dance, sing, and sit in the dark, cry, and laugh, and feel each other breathing.”
She contended that the arts have been how people have gone through oppressive horrific events. “It’s about coming together and either mirroring what’s happening in the world or doing something completely escapist instead,” she said. “We are not alone. We’re thinking about things that moved and inspired us and that feels like how we’re getting through. It feels like hope, optimism, joy, and community.”
Silverman said she had been excited about visiting Vassar because “I know what it was like to meet theater professionals when I was just starting out. I remember the feeling of awe and amazement that something that seemed like such a faraway dream could actually be possible!”
Suffs will begin a national tour in September. Silverman will also direct the upcoming The Seat of Our Pants, a remake of the play The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. In the fall of 2026, she will direct Particle Fever, a new musical about particle physics, written by Tony Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist David Henry Hwang.