Phoebe in Winter

What happens when the cost of survival is not peace but transformation?
Three brothers return home from a distant war, ready to reclaim the lives they left behind. But before the house can become home again, there is a knock at the door. A young woman named Phoebe arrives with an accusation: these men killed her own three brothers. Now she wants reparations. Not money. Not apology. Family. If her brothers are gone, these brothers must become hers.
As Phoebe’s demand takes root, the household begins to warp around her. Roles shift. Power changes hands. The violence everyone thought they had escaped starts finding new ways to live inside the room. Jen Silverman’s Phoebe in Winter is a brutal, poetic, and darkly funny post-war fable about grief, revenge, gender, family, and the insatiable hunger to be made whole after devastation.
*Michigan Premiere*

 

 

 

About the director:
Jason J. Flannery, MFA is a Grand Rapids artist and educator; teaching courses in theatre, acting, directing, and improvisation and directing collegiate productions at Grand Rapids Community College, including WILDERNESS (2019), EURYDICE (2022), GRAND CONCOURSE (2023), BOOM (2025), and CONTINUITY (2026). He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Directing from Lindenwood University (2017), where he studied directing, acting, and scenic art. At Actors’ Theatre, he serves as Social Media Coordinator, a member of the Play Selection Committee, a Scenic Artist, and as a performer; appearing in productions of THE WHALE (2018), THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (2018), AT THE TABLE (2018), SWEAT (2019), PETTY CRIMES (2023), WITCH (2023), and HYENAS (2025). This is his fourth time working as a director for Actors’, following PARADISE LOST (2024), BOTTICELLI IN THE FIRE (2025), and SPAIN (2025).

 

About the playwright:
Jen Silverman (they/them) is a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. Plays include: THE ROOMATE (Broadway: The Booth Theatre; Regionally: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival, Steppenwolf, South Coast Repertory Theatre, etc.); HIGHWAY PATROL (The Goodman); SPAIN (Second Stage Theater); COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES (Woolly Mammoth, MCC, Southwark Playhouse London); THE MOORS (Yale Repertory Theatre, The Playwrights Realm) and WITCH (Writer’s Theatre, The Geffen, The Huntington). 

Silverman is a three-time MacDowell Fellow, a member of New Dramatists and a Scholar of Note at the American Library in Paris. They write for TV and film, including Tales of the City (Netflix) and Tokyo Vice (Max). Their OSCAR® qualifying short film Troy screened at 70 festivals internationally, including the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and is featured online in The New Yorker’s Screening Room. Honors include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. More info at www.jensilverman.com.