For nearly half a century, Reuben and Dorothy Silver have illuminated the Cleveland theater scene: as performers, directors, administrators, teachers, and mentors. That they have contributed their talents as a couple has only enhanced their achievement.

Reuben began his career in 1933, as a child actor in Detroit's Yiddish theater. Although he and Dorothy briefly attended the same high school, they wouldn't discover each other until 1948, when Reuben was captivated by her performance in a Tennessee Williams production at Wayne State University. They married the following year.

Reuben spent the next six years earning his Ph.D. in theater, finishing at Ohio State University. That led to his first Cleveland role: the artistic directorship of Karamu House, the nation's oldest African-American cultural organization. His arrival was timely, for it coincided with white America's awakening interest in social change. It allowed him to work with Cleveland native Langston Hughes, mounting Hughes's plays and creating additional theater based on his poetry.

Karamu also provided an artistic home for Dorothy, who served in every capacity from actor and assistant director to resident guest director. They remained there for 21 years.

Dorothy as the sinister benefactress Clara Zachanassian in Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit at Cleveland State University Factory Theatre, 1991; revived 1992  (photograph by Chuck Humel)

In 1976, when Karamu trustees decided to look for a black artistic director, the Silvers moved on. Reuben found a niche at Cleveland State University, where together with Joe Garry, he built a wide-reaching theater arts program and mounted first-class productions in the university's Factory Theatre space. He remained there until 1993, when he was named professor emeritus.

For twelve years, Dorothy directed the Performing and Visual Arts Department at Cleveland's Jewish Community Center. Among her proudest achievements was mounting new theatrical work, including Barbara Lebow's A Shayna Maidel (1982), which went on to critical success in New York and London. Since Dorothy's retirement from the JCC, the Halle Theatre's annual new play competition bears her name.

Although their first four decades of theater would be anyone else's crowning achievement, the Silvers have enjoyed a “retirement” that is the envy of any theater professional: They are constantly working.

Reuben directed Dorothy in Driving Miss Daisy, a 1991 joint production of Lakewood’s Beck Center for the Arts and the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland.

Closer to home, the Silvers produce “Cold Storage,” a small acting company that explains the patient's viewpoint to medical personnel. They appear in film, television, and radio. For more than two decades, Reuben has hosted the weekly ArtsRap on Cleveland's WCLV (104.9 FM).

And Cleveland will always be home for the Silvers. It's not only where the phone is constantly ringing; it's where all their dreams have come to glorious fruition.

text by
Faye Sholiton

Fall 2002

The Gin Game at Ensemble Theatre (photograph by Rique Winston)

Reuben as the haunted vagrant Jenkins in Harold Pinter’s dark comedy, The Caretaker, a 2002 Charenton Theater production

But Cleveland audiences think of the Silvers, first and foremost, as Cleveland's own Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Masters of understatement, they can also explode onstage. She is riveting, even when silent. He exudes an irrepressible spirit. When they delve into their carefully chosen scripts, the results are pure magic. Among their most memorable combined performances: The Visit (CSU Factory Theatre); The Gin Game and A Trip to Bountiful (Ensemble Theatre); All My Sons (Halle Theatre); Death of a Salesman and Glass Menagerie (CSU Factory Theatre); and The Dybbuk (Great Lakes Theater Festival).

Reuben and Dorothy Silver at Karamu, 1975

By design, they tend to work together. If the script has a part for only one, the other directs. In selected memorable actor/director collaborations, Reuben played an enraged and uncompromising patriarch in The Substance of Fire (at Dobama Theatre); and Dorothy gave bravura performances as a betrayed mentor in Collected Stories (JCC Halle Theatre); and a fiercely proud Maria Callas in Master Class (Beck Center for the Arts).

The couple, who have three grown sons and three grandchildren, travel frequently. They have performed their Jewish dramatic readings throughout the U.S., Israel, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. They are sought-after panelists, judges, and consultants. For many Clevelanders, they are annual tour guides to the Stratford Festival in Ontario.