{"id":14312,"date":"2021-03-07T18:20:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T23:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=14312"},"modified":"2021-03-09T06:50:55","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T11:50:55","slug":"episode-424-jen-silverman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-424-jen-silverman","title":{"rendered":"Episode 424 – Jen Silverman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 424:
\nJen Silverman<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_424_-_Jen_Silverman.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“What strikes me is how our culture has evolved such that if we’re not being witnessed we feel like we don’t exist. The desire for fame is really just the desire to be witnessed to such a degree that you feel like you HAVE to exist.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>What price fame? With her debut novel, We Play Ourselves<\/a> (Random House), writer and playwright Jen Silverman<\/a> tells a comedic tale of theater life gone wrong, internet humiliation, a teenage feminist fight club, queer absurdist puppetry, the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, and a lot more. We get into the roots of her novel, what writing for theater<\/a> and TV\/film taught her and what she had to unlearn for this book, how she balanced her love for absurdism with narrative realism, and how to figure out which stories belong in which medium. We talk about the difference between “theater” and “Broadway” and how the pandemic has wiped out the communal experience of theater (for now), how the economics of theater can perpetuate a lack of diversity and how it feels to be “the woman” playwright in a season, how she learned to navigate the heightened unreality of LA, the difference in searching for The Path and finding A Path, why the hunger for being seen can warp pretty much all human activities, why she draws sad pandas<\/a>, and more! Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read We Play Ourselves<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“I’m really interested in art forms that reflect us back to ourselves in unexpected ways.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n