Jen Silverman's WINK to Launch 2016-17 Ruth Easton New Play Series

The popular Ruth Easton New Play Series features free public readings of new plays by Playwrights' Center Core Writers. The series features one play a month from December through April and will kick off Monday, December 5 and Tuesday, December 6 at 7 p.m. with "Wink" by Jen Silverman, directed by Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen. Readings take place at the Playwrights' Center, 2301 E. Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. Reserve tickets at pwcenter.org.

The readings of "Wink" are great opportunities to experience work by a truly original playwright in the midst of a break-out year. Silverman's plays are seeing productions on stages around the country, from Yale Repertory Theatre to Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to Off-Broadway's Playwrights Realm. "Wink" earned a spot on the 2016 Kilroys List as one of the 32 most recommended unproduced new plays by female and trans* playwrights.

About "Wink": Sofie (Sara Richardson*) is an unhappy housewife. Gregor (Peter Christian Hansen*) is her bread-winning husband. Dr. Frans (Mark Benninghofen*) is their psychiatrist. Wink (Billy Mullaney) is the cat. And Gregor has just skinned the cat. A dark comedy about the complicated and dangerous territory of the human heart. (*Member of Actors' Equity)

"I'm fascinated by human relationships," says Silverman, "and I'm always trying to find new lenses to see us through, new ways of understanding our complexities. 'Wink' is a dark comedy with absurdist tendencies, but it seeks to cut to the heart of something authentic and true in how we long for and lose each other, how we recover and rebuild."

"I have been a huge fan of Jen's work for the past five years," says Playwrights' Center Producing Artistic Director Jeremy B. Cohen. "I'm so excited for Twin Cities audiences to get to know her voice, which often embraces an absurdist aesthetic and form to get at something deeper within humanity. Supporting Jen's incisive and deeply funny work also gives us the opportunity to break down the historically male-dominated genre of absurdism."

Jen Silverman's work has been produced in New York by Clubbed Thumb ("Phoebe in Winter") and the Playwrights Realm ("Crane Story"), and regionally at Actors Theatre of Louisville ("The Roommate," Humana 2015; "Wondrous Strange," Humana 2016), Yale Rep ("The Moors"), InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia ("The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane," Barrymore Award, Steinberg Award citation). She has productions this season at Woolly Mammoth (World Premiere of "Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Boops"), The Playwrights Realm @ The Duke (New York premiere of "The Moors"), South Coast Repertory Theatre, and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (World Premiere of "All the Roads Home"), among others. She is the 2016-2017 Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellow at the Lark. www.jensilverman.com

The Ruth Easton New Play Series at the Playwrights' Center, now in its 12th year, provides selected Core Writers with 20 hours of workshop time to develop a new play in collaboration with top-notch actors and other theater artists. Plays receive two public readings, giving audience members a unique and immediate way to experience new work and a chance to be part of the creative process. Plays recently seen in the Ruth Easton New Play Series that have full productions this theater season include George Brant's "Marie and Rosetta" Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater and Carlyle Brown's "Finding Fish" at the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis.

The 2016-17 Ruth Easton New Play Series will also feature "queens" by Martyna Majok, "Eden Prairie, 1971" by Mat Smart, "The Sea & The Stars" by local playwright Harrison David Rivers, and "Minneapolis/St. Paul" by Lee Blessing. Details at pwcenter.org/ruth-easton-series.

All events in the Ruth Easton New Play Series are free and open to the public. Reservations are recommended; reserve your spots at pwcenter.org or by contacting the Playwrights' Center at (612) 332-7481 or info@pwcenter.org.