Spain

by Jen Silverman

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.

Genres: Plays

108 pages, Paperback

Published August 27, 2024

About the author

Jen Silverman is a New York-based writer. Born in the U.S., she was raised across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Her theatre work includes The Moors (Yale Repertory Theatre premiere, off-Broadway with The Playwrights Realm, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist); The Roommate (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Humana world premiere, multiple regional productions including South Coast Rep, SF Playhouse and Williamstown Theatre Festival, upcoming at Steppenwolf); Phoebe In Winter (Off-off Broadway with Clubbed Thumb); Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties (Woolly Mammoth premiere); and All the Roads Home, a play with songs (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park premiere).

Jen is a member of New Dramatists, a Core Writer at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, an affiliated artist with SPACE on Ryder Farm, and has developed work with the O’Neill, New York Theatre Workshop, Playpenn, Portland Center Stage, The Ground Floor Residency at Berkeley Rep, and the Royal Court in London among other places. She’s a two-time MacDowell fellow, recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, the Helen Merrill Award, an LMCC Fellowship, and the Yale Drama Series Award. She was the 2016-2017 Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellow at the Lark. Jen has a two-book deal with Random House for a collection of stories (The Island Dwellers, pub date May 1, 2018) and a novel. Education: Brown, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A promising play that feels like it could have and should have been better. There is a great idea here that gets lost in a muddled narrative. It seems to give up on the most interesting aspect of the drama, which is Ernest Hemingway unwittingly making a Russian propaganda film in Spain, and instead moves to a somewhat unconvincing and flaccid attempt at critiquing disinformation on the internet. The play is overly concerned with the “noir” gimmick (which it doesn’t need and just adds complicated and fussy stage business) rather than focus on the truly interesting personal relationships at stake. I would have cut the entire last scene and just ended the play one scene earlier. The final scene is quite silly and heavy-handed.

This is the first play I’ve read by Jen Silverman. I’ve never known a playwright to put in so many directions, from numerous line readings for the actors on every page, to such specific staging requirements it seems one would need to rent the original set to produce it. And then there are the directions that are more like philosophical commentaries on her own writing, rather than playable actions that either the actors or the director can use in any practical way. Bizarre stuff.

The ending, in particular, describes the way a character is singing in a completely abstract way that absolutely no one could communicate to an audience. It’s more of a personal observation by the playwright on art, rather than a stage direction. I’ve read hundred of scripts and never seen such an odd thing tacked on to the final moment. Points for originality, I guess.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Has some powerful moments and brings up interesting thoughts on propaganda and art, and the way that art can reshape our thoughts. The first half of the show could have been stronger and more depth brought to the characters and their relationships, even with the necessary distrust.

[Emma Bucknam · Rating 5 out of 5]

another Jen Silverman hit! so many interesting questions raised about art and propaganda