By SHARON EBERSON
Two-time Tony nominee Leigh Silverman carved out time in her very busy schedule on the eve of SUFFS arrival in Pittsburgh Tuesday to talk about the touring musical, its significance, and the state of theater in the United States.
Silverman should know.
The graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s BFA Directing and MFA Playwriting programs, and an intern for Pittsburgh CLO in 1994 — “We did The Music Man with Gary Sandy, and just a variety of really amazing musicals that we mounted in seven days,” she recalled — is known for the dozens of new works she has directed on and off Broadway, plus a revival on the way. She will direct the first Broadway return of The Full Monty for Roundabout Theater in April 2027.
It’s hard to pin down all the projects she is juggling, although she mentions a new musical, Particle Fever, that will debut at La Jolla Playhouse early next year. Another new musical, The Seat of Our Pants, based on Thorton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, debuted off-Broadway at New York’s Public Theater in October, and earned Silverman Drama Desk and Drama League Award nominations. She also directed Sean Hayes in the solo play The Unknown, which ran off-Broadway in April.
Silverman’s Tony nominations are for Violet and SUFFS, at the Benedum Center through Sunday, July 26.
In 2024, Silverman was director of both Best Play revival nominee Yellow Face (it had an earlier stint at the New York Public Theater, and SUFFS, a Best Musical nominee that won book and orchestration Tony Awards for star Shaina Taub.
Just a few hours before SUFFS took the stage in Pittsburgh, Silverman was on the phone talking about her early days in Pittsburgh, coming back to talk with CMU students, and the phenomenon that is SUFFS, the story of the determined suffragists who gained the right to vote for women.
onSTAGE PITTSBURGH: I read that you studied directing at Carnegie Mellon with [longtime Pittsburgh director and educator] Jed Allen Harris.
LEIGH SILVERMAN: Yes. I was there between my junior and senior year of high school, and Jed was my teacher, and he admitted me into the directing program out of that pre-college program. So when I started my senior year of high school, I knew I was going to Carnegie Mellon, and it was Jed’s first year of teaching full-time, not just as an adjunct. When he retired a few years ago, I really felt like I had been on the journey with him. I feel like he really got me, he got my potential. He was one of the first people I felt like who really did that for me, and that started early. I was 16 or 17.
oSP: So is it meaningful to have a show like SUFFS coming to Pittsburgh, having spent time here?
SILVERMAN: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’ve been back a number of times, and I care so much about CMU and being an alum from there. Actually, I presented [Carnegie Mellon and Tony Awards Excellence in Theatre Education Award] this year to the teacher, Freddie Hendricks. So for me, having the show in Pittsburgh is a huge, huge deal. I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to include it in the tour this year. And so that’s really great. I was also an intern at the CLO, so it’s a real full-circle moment. I have to say there were two places that I was most excited about on the tour. One was Washington, D.C., where I grew up, and the other was Pittsburgh. So lots of friends hopefully are coming out to support it.
oSP: SUFFS has an all-female identifying cast and most of the creative team is, too. You are a big supporter of diversity and women in theater, so the topic seems like such a natural. How did your involvement with SUFFS start?
SILVERMAN: In 2014, I directed my first musical, called Violet, and it was an exciting time. I had been a director for many, many years in New York, and had never done a musical, and then did that musical, and had my first Tony nomination. I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I direct musicals now. This is so exciting.’ And I got taken to see Shaina Taub in concert. She had just graduated from NYU and was doing her own work. And I just was like, ‘Whoever this person is, she’s a genius, and someone needs to commission her to write a musical.’ And the person who took me to see her at Joe’s Pub said, ‘I did just commission her to write a musical.’ And that person was Rachel Sussman, who was one of our amazing lead producers on the show. And that was in 2014. We did our first reading of SUFFS in 2016, had our premiere off-Broadway, and then on to Broadway.
I have to say it’s been so incredible to watch Shaina just flourish during that time. And Rachel just won the Tony for Liberation this past year. It’s just been so incredible. And I feel so lucky to be a part of the journey of SUFFS. And, of course, now that we’ve had this really amazing tour and we recouped on the road, it’s being done in high schools all over, and the PBS Great Performances recording … for me, the accessibility for people all around the country was the reason to do it on Broadway. We had a great run. We were there for 10 months. But really, [the success makes it possible to have] accessibility for people who don’t go to Broadway regularly. And I just love seeing videos of the high schools that have done it this year, that will do it next year, the summer camps. … These are parts and stories that I wish I had when I was growing up. Giving all kinds of accessibility to people all over with this show feels just like kind of the icing on the cake.
“These are parts and stories that I wish I had when I was growing up. Giving all kinds of accessibility to people all over with this show feels just like kind of the icing on the cake.”
— Director Leigh Silverman
oSP: Voters’ rights are always in the news, but right now, what does it mean to you for people to be able to experience a show about the struggle for the 19th Amendment [granting women the right to vote]?
SILVERMAN: Really, truly it means giving people a dose of hope, optimism, a sense of our history, a sense of whose ancestors we stand on the shoulders of, to leave audiences feeling buoyed, to give them a sense of both the perspective of what happened previously in this country, what it takes for social movements, the time and energy that it takes, and also the sense of, these weren’t superheroes. They were people just like you and me, who were working together, sometimes working against each other, but for the same purpose, and a sense of the struggles, the intergenerational struggles, the racial struggles. To me, this is exactly the kind of show that everybody needs to see right now, because it tells us the story of ourselves. And the truth is that it’s history most people don’t know. I didn’t know it. I would’ve been the perfect audience for history like this.
But I have to say, truly, to have a show that leaves people feeling uplifted about politics, uplifted about the struggle, uplifted about working for whatever they care about in their community, motivated, energized, that’s for me, the real reason to see SUFFS right now.
oSP: There’s a heavy conversation happening about Broadway and in the regions, about the high cost of developing and presenting new shows. Do you think there’s a secret sauce to getting to Broadway these days, or is it just as important for the regions to get a new show, as it is on Broadway?
SILVERMAN: I feel really lucky to be premiering a show at La Jolla. It’s an amazing place to try out a new musical. Many amazing musicals have started there, and made the journey to Broadway. I think that the economics of Broadway are clearly insane. There’s a million ways you could read about that. But I think that all artists can do is to keep doing the work and making the best shows they can. The financial model is clearly, if not broken, desperately in need of repair and rethinking. People who are producers and managers and whose goal is to make it feasible and economically viable is not my job, but I do feel like my job is to keep doing the work. And because I don’t work on Broadway exclusively, I feel lucky to be able to have a thriving career both off-Broadway and in the regions. And I do think that the tide will turn on Broadway and it will be a hospitable place for new musicals once again. I think we can all agree it’s really not right now.
oSP: You are aware that Pittsburgh CLO is done after this show …
SILVERMAN: Yes, I was sorry to hear that.
oSP: There is a process involving them right now, but also, Pittsburgh is seeing a surge in independently produced works and community theaters making their way Downtown. How do you look at the future for places like Pittsburgh?
SILVERMAN: I just think, as artists, as people who love theater and support theater, what else is there for us to do, but keep making it, keep supporting it, to keep finding ways to make it irresistible to an audience? I do have to say that there’s a lot of bad news about ticket prices and accessibility and all kinds of things. But on the upside, it is one of the few places that you go that you know AI hasn’t participated in. You have real people telling real stories. And I think it’s going to be a place that more and more people want to go to because they know they can have a real experience with real people in a room that will be different every night. People are desperate for something that feels authentic, in terms of an experience, and not have to wonder whether it was made by AI.
oSP: When you come to Carnegie Mellon and talk to performing arts students, is there any specific advice that you give or that you have right now?
SILVERMAN: I tell people to remember it’s a long game, that impatience and anxiety and being jealous of your colleagues, that all works against you. And one of the crazy things about theater is that it’s not like being a doctor, where you go to school for a certain amount of time and then you have the degree. One of the benefits of a career that has no clear path is that it has no path. And that allows for a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity, a lot of proactiveness, and a real sense of. you’re making it up. Everybody’s career path is different, and that comes with a huge amount of freedom, and [I say to] embrace that kind of opportunity, as opposed to thinking of it as a crisis. So it’s the long game, [as well as] emotional and financial sustainability, however you can do it, and to keep practicing no matter how that happens, and to figure out how to stay in it. If it’s not going to happen this year or next year, what do the next 5 to 10 years look like? That’s a way to not let it be just maddening day-to-day.
oSP: Is there anything else about SUFS that you’d want people to know coming in? Do you think of it as a musical history lesson …
SILVERMAN: I never describe it as a history lesson, because I just think it’s this amazing story about people who are trying to make the world a better place, and they do it through amazing music. And I think it’s a show for everyone. It’s entertaining and there’s really nothing like it. And this cast is fire. They are so incredible. And it’s just been amazing city to city over this year to watch them just blow the roof off of places. We’re getting close to the end of this tour. And I just think that everyone should see these incredible performers, because they are just outrageously great.
🎟️ TICKETS: Pittsburgh CLO presents Suffs at the Benedum Center, Downtown, July 21-26, 2026. https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/SUFFS
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