Annie Baker
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- Born:
- April 1981, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
- Awards And Honors:
- Pulitzer Prize (2014)
- Notable Works:
- “Body Awareness”
- “John”
- “The Antipodes”
- “The Flick”
Annie Baker (born April 1981, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American playwright, best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Flick (2013). In 2023 The Guardian described her work as “disquietingly moving ensemble pieces populated by characters who live in ordinary pockets of New England and speak in dialogue that feels wholly undevised and quietly revelatory.”
Early life and B.F.A.
Baker grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts, though she moved between New York City and Massachusetts after her parents divorced. She attended Tisch, New York University’s arts school, graduating in 2003 with a B.F.A. in dramatic writing. Thereafter, like many people involved in theater, she took day jobs of all sorts to support herself while following her passion. She wrote Nocturama, in which a depressed young man moves back home to live with his mother and her boyfriend, in 2006.
Early plays and M.F.A.
Baker’s debut Off-Broadway play, Body Awareness, was performed in 2008, and it brought her national recognition. The work was set in small-town Vermont, and it concerns a troubled lesbian couple, a son with Asperger syndrome, and a male photographer of nudes as their houseguest.
In order to focus her efforts, Baker studied with Mac Wellman at Brooklyn College, earning an M.F.A. in 2009. That same year her Circle Mirror Transformations, which began as an attempt to create a circular plot structure, was produced. The play follows the development of a small-town acting class as the students perform acting exercises over the course of six weeks. The play was one of the longest-running shows in the history of the theater organization Playwrights Horizons, and it won an Obie Award for best new American play. Baker’s next work, The Aliens (2010), was also very well received. In 2012 she produced a highly praised adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Her gift for natural dialogue made her the ideal person for the job.
The Flick
In 2013 Baker won international acclaim for The Flick, which premiered at Playwrights Horizons. The play revealed the lives and desires of three workers at the last film-projection theater in Massachusetts. Somewhat controversial for its duration (3 hours 15 minutes), The Flick nevertheless received largely positive reviews, though some reviewers found the pauses that characterized Baker’s style tedious. However, most agreed that Baker told an intelligent and moving story well. In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize for the drama, she also received another Obie for playwriting. After a nearly eight-month Off-Broadway run, the play premiered in London in April 2016.
John, The Antipodes, and other work from the late 2010s
Baker continued to pen works that were “untheatrical” theater, focusing less on action and more on precisely presented conversations, complete with imprecisely articulated thoughts and awkward silences. Her 2015 play, John, followed the squabbles of a discordant New York City couple during their stay at an eerie bed-and-breakfast in Pennsylvania. The drama, which ran more than three hours long, garnered critical acclaim. In 2017 Baker wrote the play The Antipodes, which observed a brainstorming session by a group of screenwriters, and, with playwright Heidi Schreck, she wrote the episode “A Short History of Weird Girls” for the Amazon television series I Love Dick. Accolades for Baker’s work continued that year when she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
Infinite Life and Janet Planet
Baker followed with Infinite Life (2023), a play observing five women at a health retreat in northern California. She also ventured into film, writing and directing the drama Janet Planet (2023).
