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2011 — Crane Story

"...'Crane Story' is consistently gorgeous...Ms. Silverman's script percolates with interesting and often daring ideas..."
–Catherine Rampell, New York Times

"'Crane Story' showcases the playwright's abundant ambition: It features poetry, magical realism and the distinct banter of transcultural, 21st-century adolescents. There are also elaborate puppets and a soundscape of rain and wind created by performers onstage. And the settings shift between real and surreal, from the bedroom of a Rilke-reading, 30-something-year-old stoner to an underworld library where the dead are archived and available for lending. All together on one stage, it amounts to a kind of theatrical fireworks display..."
–Lizzie Simon, Wall Street Journal

"In the atmospheric world of Jen Silverman's 'Crane Story', we watch her deeply drawn characters wander through the wet streets of Japan, and also the underworld...Watching scenes where Cassis discusses the stages of life/death with a the librarian Skell in the underworld or where she speaks to her brother four years before his death feel alive in imagination, but perhaps more importantly, are always rooted in what Silverman seems to be drawing: a world where nobody has found home and they spend their lives looking for it."
–Matthew Paul Olmos, New York Theatre Review

"The production contains a number of lyrical passages and striking images that captivate...Silverman's imaginative script is suffused with both beauty and sadness, as the various characters attempt to come to terms with their place in the world."
–Dan Bacalzo, TheatreMania

"When Cassis, a Japanese American played matter-of-factly by Angela Lin, encounters her first wraithlike ghost, she dryly asks it, 'What are you looking at?' It's a refreshingly funny start to Silverman's delicate story of life and death..."
–Mitch Montgomery, Back Stage

2010 — Akarui

"Silverman’s play, an exuberant and haunting take on the mechanics of transformation and love takes its characters to 'the rich dark heart of the end of the world' – a rave presided over by the DJ Akarui, a mesmerizing and mysterious figure who may or may not have the power to orchestrate change in an individual."
–Cornell College News Center

2008 — The Education of Macaloco & Notes on Drowning

"In Jen Silverman’s 'The Education of Macoloco,' Anessa teaches her son bizarre trivia and the so-called 'facts of life.' But Anessa withholds the truth of Macoloco’s paternity and, until the play’s conclusion, of her inner life. Such silences befit the winner of the Jury Prize of 'The Seven: Something Left Unsaid,' FUSION Theatre Company’s New Works Festival. Now in its third year, the festival received 417 short works from 41 states and 6 countries. The jury reads submissions 'blind' and chooses 7 for performance. This year’s winners suggest a bright future for the international stage. In particular, expect to hear again from Silverman. Silverman, who graduated from Brown University in 2006 and begins the MFA program at Iowa Playwrights Workshop this fall, had 2 plays in the festival. Like 'Macoloco,' Silverman’s 'Notes on Drowning (For the Man Who Cannot Make the Journey)' withholds essential information until the end. The final revelation belittles mundane suffering yet proves oddly life affirming. Strong direction (Jen Grigg and Elizabeth Huffman) and solid performances energize Silverman’s learned, witty and affective scripts."
–The ABQ Journal, New Mexico

2006 — Lizardskin

"Genuinely emotional and quietly surprising, the play is at once eerie and witty, and never quite goes where you think it will.

Shattering the fourth wall and presenting the play in a not-exactly-linear style, Silverman (and director Katherine Kovner) keep the mood surreal and fantastical, letting the characters argue amongst themselves about what did or did not actually happen in the story. But while the presentation might be avant-garde, the story and the characters are realistic and recognizably human."
–Jena Tesse Fox, broadwayworld.com