In the first book-length study of Annie Baker, one of the most
critically acclaimed playwrights in the United States today and winner
of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur
"genius" grant, Amy Muse analyzes Baker's plays and other work. These
include The Flick, John, The Antipodes, the Shirley Vermont plays, and
her adaptation of Uncle Vanya. Muse illuminates their intellectual and
ethical themes and issues by contextualizing them with the other works
of theatre, art, theology, and psychology that Baker read while writing
them.
Through close discussions of Baker's work, this book immerses readers in
her use of everyday language, her themes of loneliness, desire, empathy,
and storytelling, and her innovations with stage time. Enriched by a
foreword from Baker's former professor, playwright Mac Wellman, as well
as essays by four scholars, Thomas Butler, Jeanmarie Higgins, Katherine
Weiss, and Harrison Schmidt, this is a companionable guide for students
of American literature and theatre studies, which deepens their
knowledge and appreciation of Baker's dramatic invention.
Muse argues that Baker is finely attuned to the language of the
everyday: imperfect, halting, marked with unexpressed desires,
banalities, and silence. Called "antitheatrical," these plays draw us
back to the essence of theatre: space, time, and story, sitting with
others in real time, witnessing the dramatic in the ordinary lives of
ordinary people. Baker's revolution for the stage has been to slow it
down and bring us all into the mystery and pleasure of attention.
