Max Silverman was late meeting up with his parents at their hotel in New York City a few weeks ago, but he had a pretty good excuse.

He was saving someone’s life.

“Max was on a subway platform and saw that a middle-aged man was unconscious on the floor of a nearby train,” said his proud father, a local actor named Joel Silverman. Another man was attempting CPR, but the guy on the floor had no pulse. Max joined in, revived him and together they continued to work on the man for another 20 minutes until paramedics arrived and took over.

He only told his parents the story by way of apologizing for being late.

Max Silverman, by the way, is a composer and sound designer. Add to that: Reluctant real-life hero. But the only way you’ll ever hear about it is through his beaming parents, who are both licensed psychotherapists.

“Max had three surgeries before he was 8,” said his mother, Nancy Portnoy. “We would bring him stuffed animals in the hospital – and after we left, he would deliver them to other children.”

Max surely would not want me telling you that story, which is exactly why I didn’t ask for his permission. 

The 29-year-old graduate of Fairview High School in Boulder and Rider University in New Jersey is not just a prolific sound designer. He’s a really good one. He created sound, including in many cases composing original music, for a whopping 24 theatrical productions in 2023 – 16 in Colorado and eight across the country, including his second off-Broadway musical, “Madwomen of the West,” featuring Caroline Aaron from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and Marilu Henner from “Taxi.”

In Colorado, he created sound for the Arvada Center, Curious Theatre, Cherry Creek Theatre, The Catamounts, Creede Repertory Theatre and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, where he designed sound for the world premiere of “Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown.”

He just passed a career milestone by designing his 100th theatrical show. And not even yet 30.

He also just happens to be a first responder with the rank of lieutenant in the Boulder Emergency Squad. That is a 60-year-old volunteer service organization that has had Silverman responding to crime scenes, wildfires, ice-water rescues, cars skidding off the road and even light plane crashes.

You know … in his spare time.

When something happens, Joel said, “Max takes the call, heads out and supervises the scene.”

This all started when Max was hired as what is called “a crisis actor” at Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital in central Denver. Many local stage and film actors have this side gig helping health-care providers train for real-life emergencies by playing patients in all sorts of trauma exercises. It’s an invaluable service to budding first responders, but Max decided (and told his mom), “I don’t want to just be an actor in that world. I want to be involved.”

Max was firmly established in the New York theater scene when he returned to Boulder in 2020 to ride out the pandemic with his parents. While others pondered rearranging their furniture, Silverman signed up for a two-year, twice-a-week training program with the Boulder Emergency Squad. Something to work on while he’s not creating art – and a lot of it.  

Silverman’s list of 2023 credits is long and varied. Three of them – ”Miss Rhythm,” “Dreamgirls” at the Lone Tree Arts Center and “Cinderella” at the Arvada Center – were directed by Kenny Moten.

”Sound design is so important in creating an environment, and Max is one of my favorites because of his attention to detail,” Moten said. “He lifts everything up.”

His parents’ favorites are the plays, because that’s where Max has the most freedom, ironically, to create original music. Joel, currently the understudy to Wayne Kennedy as Tevye in BDT Stage’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” cites “the dark and haunting” underscore that heightened the tragedy of the Matthew Shepard murder in the Arvada Center’s “The Laramie Project.”

But they both were particularly blown away by what he brought to Curious Theatre’s “Amerikin,” a tough play about a white supremacist who discovers he has African ancestry in his DNA. The character’s wife is far gone into a severe case of postpartum depression, and Silverman wrote original music that so accentuated the great actor Candace Joice’s haunting monologue about wanting to kill herself, it was as if the two were scene partners.

Silverman was everywhere in 2023, including creating environmental sounds on an outdoor farm in Westminster (for The Catamounts’ “Pride of the Farm”); sounds for the summer season 250 miles away at the Creede Repertory Theatre; in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts; at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles; and at Columbia University in New York.

But Max is, at least for now, a true Coloradan again – for about 75% of the time, at least. And we have his love for the Boulder Emergency Squad to thank for that.

Already he has five theater projects lined up for 2024 including a children’s theater production of “A Year With Frog and Toad” at the Arvada Center (Jan. 23-Feb. 24 and April 25-May 17); a one-woman play called “Acts of Faith” for Local Theater in Boulder (Feb. 1-18); “Rent” for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (May 2-June 2); and two summer shows for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival: “Macbeth” and “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

And likely saving any lives that might need saving along the way. Like in June, when he was working on a show called “The Estate Sale” at The People’s Building in Aurora. “A man was overdosing at the front door,” said The Catamounts’ Sara Horle. “Max and our stage manager, James Jewkes, sprung into action, got him in a safe position and worked on him until the paramedics got there.”

Joel Silverman admits to being a bit biased, “but I have to say that, aside from being ridiculously competent in all of the things that he does,” he said, “my son is one of the most giving, compassionate people I know.”

Max Silverman/Colorado 2023

1. “Amerikin,” Curious Theatre

2. “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” Cherry Creek Theatre

3. “Damn Yankees,” Arvada Center

4. “The Headliners,” Cherry Creek Theatre

5. “Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown,” Galleria Theatre at the Denver Center

6. “Pride of the Farm,” The Catamounts

7. “Sondheim on Sondheim,” Cherry Creek Theatre

8. “The Estate Sale,” The Catamounts

9. “The Royale,” Creede Repertory Theatre

10. “Mountain Octopus,” Creede Repertory Theatre

11. “The Winter’s Tale,” Colorado Shakespeare Festival

12. “One Man, Two Guvnors,” Colorado Shakespeare Festival

13. “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” Arvada Center

14. “The Laramie Project,” Arvada Center

15. “Dreamgirls,” Lone Tree Arts Center

16. “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” Arvada Center 

 Max Silverman/Elsewhere 2023

1. “Asphyxia,” Lenfest Center for the Arts at Columbia University (New York)

2. “Napoli, Brooklyn,” Columbia University School of the Arts (New York)

3. “Medea,” Columbia University School of the Arts (New York)

4. “Root Rot,” Lenfest Center for the Arts at Columbia University (New York)

5. “The Outcasts of Penikese Island,” Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse (Vineyard Haven, Mass.)

6. “Three Sisters,” American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Los Angeles)

7. “Twelfth Night,” American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Los Angeles)

8. “Madwomen of the West,” Actors Temple Theatre (New York) 

Max Silverman/Upcoming

1. “A Year With Frog and Toad,” Arvada Center (Jan. 23-Feb. 24 and April 25-May 17)

2. “Acts of Faith,” Local Theatre at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder (Feb. 1-18)

3. “Rent,” Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (May 2-June 2)

4. “Macbeth,” Colorado Shakespeare Festival (June 8-Aug. 11)

5. “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Colorado Shakespeare Festival (July 6-Aug. 11)

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.