Talking writing, rhythm, and character with Annie Baker
Residency Five playwright Annie Baker has an ear for rhythm. Since her play Body Awareness premiered at
Atlantic Theatre Company in 2008, Baker has been praised for her distinct style, which embraces unnatural
silence in hyper-realistic settings. A set of stage directions in her 2009 play Circle Mirror Transformation,
about a group of adult students in a community center drama class, reads “She walks over to the yoga ball,
and sits down. She bounces there, sadly, for about fifteen seconds.” The Flick, her Pulitzer Prize-winning
play that was recently remounted at Barrow Street Theatre following its premiere at Playwrights Horizons
in 2013, centers on workers in a Worcester, Massachusetts movie theatre. Prior to heading into rehearsals
for John, the first play of Baker’s residency at Signature, she spoke with Literary Manager Jenna Clark
Embrey about her process, inspiration, and her longtime collaboration with director Sam Gold.
Signature: How did you get your start as a writer?
Annie Baker: I always wanted to be a writer. I’m not sure why; neither of my parents are writers. But it was something I wanted
to do all the time the second I learned how to do it. How I came to playwriting is also a bit of a mystery to me. I guess I did a lot
of high school theatre and I remember being part of those after-school plays was the happiest I ever felt as a kid. But I knew it
wasn’t the acting that was making me happy...in fact, the acting itself was the part I wasn’t so crazy about. It was dealing with
the theatre text that gave me pleasure, and the staging of the live event.
(left): Annie Baker, 2015.
(right): Louisa Krause and
Aaron Clifton Moten in
The Flick at Playwrights
Horizons, 2013.
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