Many of his plays have been produced off-Broadway, and also at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Silver was born in 1960 in Philadelphia and as teen, attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York.
'"[1] Several of his plays received premieres at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC, including Fat Men in Skirts (1991), Free Will and Wanton Lust (January 1993)[2] and The Food Chain (1993-94 season).
[3] In her review of Fat Men in Skirts at Woolly Mammoth Theatre for The Washington Post, Lloyd Rose wrote: "Silver is a modern American absurdist in the tradition of John Guare or Harry Kondoleon, but more of a lowbrow.
Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review: "His grimly witty play 'Pterodactyls' recycles all the cliches of the unraveling all-American family and scales them up to the point that they become poignantly grotesque symbols of a species on the verge of extinction... staged with firecracker snap by David Warren and illuminated by several incandescent performances, 'Pterodactyls' offers, for its first three-quarters, as much antic fizz as any comedy in town.
Ben Brantley in his New York Times review wrote: "In 'The Food Chain,' Nicky Silver's toxic, fractured tale of sex, loneliness and the importance of being thin, the pursuit of love is an even more convoluted process than usual.
[10] His play Too Much Sun premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre on May 1, 2014 in previews, officially on May 18, with direction by Mark Brokaw and starring Linda Lavin and Jennifer Westfeldt.
[19] Theatre scholar Jordan Schildcrout has noted the recurring theme of the prodigal son in Silver's plays, and sees Todd in Pterodactyls as a symbolic figure who challenges and subverts homophobic stereotypes used to vilify gay men during the AIDS crisis.