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.
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