Leigh Silverman.

When did you last see a lesbian playwrights name up in lights on Broadway? That's reason enough to cheer the opening of Lisa Kron's Well at New York's Longacre Theater, opening March 30. Equally unusual is the Broadway debut of Leigh Silverman, the 31-year-old lesbian director who shepherded Kron's invigorating play over the past six years through several workshops across the country, an acclaimed off-Broadway production, and an engagement in San Francisco.

"Leigh's artistic fearlessness and humanity are what I value the most," says playwright-performer Kron. "You feel that you are in a warm bath of attention and care, but in retrospect you realize that you have also been pushed out of the safety zone."

The theme is wellness--of individuals and society--but the play defies conventions. Departing from her trademark solo shows, Kron has written parts for other actors in Well, skillfully and hilariously setting herself up to allow the other characters, particularly her homebound mother, to demolish her own show. 'The play is really emotionally satisfying and transformative at the end, and the audience's perspective has to completely change," says Silverman. "It's fun, as the director of this crazy piece of theater, to build everything up so you can destroy it."

A playwright herself (Brandon Teena), Silverman says she derives her greatest pleasure from nurturing new work. "I love writers who play with form and give the audience the unexpected experience." She recently directed the Five Lesbian Brothers (Kron is one of them) in their latest, Oedipus at Palm Springs, and she's currently working on the upcoming musical Pretty Dead Girl as well as FLOTUS, a new play about Laura Bush. Now one of the few women directors to work on Broadway, Silverman's career has certainly kicked into high gear.

On the personal front, Silverman says the best thing that's happened to her is getting married in New York in 2004 to Susie Page, her girlfriend of eight years. "I work so hard, and I'm never home," she reports. "I'm so lucky to have somebody in my life who is so supportive and willing to put up with me."