Annie Baker

Annie Baker (born 1981) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright.^[1]

Early life

Baker was born in 1981, and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. She graduated from the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.^[2] She earned her MFA from Brooklyn College.

Career

Her play, Body Awareness, was staged Off-Broadway by the Atlantic Theater Company in May and June 2008. The play featured JoBeth Williams^[3] and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Circle Mirror Transformation premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons^[4][5] in October 2009 and received the Obie Award^[6] for Best New American Play and Performance. Her play, The Aliens, which premiered Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in April 2010, was a finalist for the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and shared the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play with Circle Mirror Transformation.^[7]

Her adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya premiered at the Soho Repertory Theatre in June 2012 and was called a "funky, fresh new production" by The New York Times reviewer.^[8]

Her play, The Flick, premiered at Playwrights Horizons in March 2013. The New York Times reviewer wrote: "Ms. Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off-Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight..."^[9] The play received the Obie Award for Playwriting in 2013.^[10] The Flick won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.^[1]

She teaches playwriting at New York University, Barnard College,^[11] and in the MFA program SUNY Stony Brook Southampton.

Baker was one of seven playwrights selected to participate in the 2008 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab.^[12] In 2011 she was named a Fellow of United States Artists.^[13] In 2013, she received The Steinberg Playwright Award.^[14] She is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Creative Arts Drama & Performance Art.^[15] A new play, titled The Last of the Little Hours, written by Baker has been chosen for development at the Sundance Institute's 2014 Theatre Lab in Utah to be presented in July. Annie Baker plans to direct the play herself.^[16]

The Shirley, Vermont Plays Festival

In October and November of 2010, three Boston theatre companies produced Annie Baker's three plays that are set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont: Circle Mirror Transformation, produced by the Huntington Theatre Company, Body Awareness, produced by SpeakEasy Stage Company, and The Aliens, produced by Company One.^[17][18]

Works

• Body Awareness, world premiere at Atlantic Theater Company, June 2008
• Circle Mirror Transformation, world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, October 2009
• The Aliens, world premiere at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, (Off-Broadway) April 2010
• Nocturama (reading, May 10, 2010 at Manhattan Theatre Club)^[19]
• Uncle Vanya (Adaptation), June 2012 at Soho Repertory Theatre
• The Flick, world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, March 2013

References

External links

• New York Times review of The Aliens
• TimeOut New York profile
• TimeOut New York review of Body Awareness
• Casting Complete for Goldfarb and Baker Plays at Playwrights Horizons", playbill.com, Jones, Kenneth, June 2009
• New Yorker Profile