Okay, so let's dive in. Annie Baker. She's, well,
arguably one of the most essential, maybe paradoxical...
American playwrights working today, wouldn't
you say, over the last, what, 15 years? Oh, absolutely
essential. And paradoxical is exactly the right
word. I mean, she's racked up these huge awards
of Pulitzer, the MacArthur Genius Grant, Obies.
Right, the list goes on. But here's the kicker,
the paradox you mentioned. She got all this acclaim
by deliberately trying to make theater that feels,
well, she's quoted as saying, as untheatrical
as possible. Which, it's just fascinating, isn't
it? Making theater by almost not making theater
in the conventional sense. It's a remarkable
contradiction, yeah. And it makes her such a
compelling figure in contemporary art. She, you
know, slows everything down on stage, makes us
really sit with silence, focuses on the totally
mundane. The everyday stuff. Exactly. But somehow,
through that really intense observation, she
uncovers something profound. You could argue
she's really shifted what audiences even consider
drama. She's been at the forefront of that change.
So that's our mission. for this deep dive and
we want to trace that journey look at her background
really get into dissecting that signature anti
-theatrical style that shook things up and also
touch on her more recent move which is pretty
significant into directing feature films we want
to give you the listener the full picture of
an artist who didn't just challenge expectations
but you know totally succeeded because of it
And we should probably dig into her methods,
her inspirations. But maybe before we get into
the the real high art stagecraft, we should start
with this little detail from her early days.
Oh, yes. This is brilliant. It's kind of unexpected,
but it really sets the stage, so to speak, for
understanding her whole commitment to authenticity
later on. A unique perspective on reality versus,
well, manufactured reality. OK, lay it on us.
This is one of my favorite bits from the sources.
Before she was the queen of hypernaturalism off
Broadway. What was she doing? Well, according
to our sources, one of her early jobs was working
as a guest wrangler. A guest wrangler. Yeah.
Helping manage the contestants on, wait for it,
the reality TV show The Bachelor. No way. The
Bachelor. That's almost performance art in itself.
The contrast. Yeah. Talk about a clash of worlds.
Couldn't script it better, could you? Right.
So let's unpack her background a bit because
knowing where she came from, her... her academic
path, it helps make sense of why she maybe felt
the need to break the rules so thoroughly later.
Okay. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
April 81, but actually grew up mostly in Amherst,
Massachusetts. Amherst. Okay. So like classic
New England intellectual hub vibe. Exactly. And
her family fits right into that. Her father,
Con Nugent, he was an administrator for the five
colleges consortium there. Pretty prestigious.
Right. And her mother, Linda Baker, was a psychology
doctoral student. So you've got academia, analysis,
observation, baked right in. Yeah, you can see
how an environment like that might prize, you
know, careful observation, language, how people
pick. Definitely. And there's clearly a strong
literary thing going on, too. We should note
her background is mixed Irish Catholic father,
Jewish mother, and her brother, Benjamin Baker
Nugent, he's an author, too. Ah, okay. So writing,
scrutinizing human behavior. It was kind of the
family business in a way. Seems like it. But
it wasn't just osmosis. Her formal training was
rigorous, very focused on dramatic writing structure,
which is interesting given how she later dismantled
it. Where did she study? She got her BFA from
the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch
School of the Arts, big name program. Okay, solid
foundation. And she didn't stop there. She followed
that up with postgraduate work, which feels really
key. She got her MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn
College, finished up in 2009. 2009, okay. That
academic grounding is crucial, I think. It wasn't
just raw. talent. She really studied dramatic
form, which means when she started subtracting
things later, like conventional plots, she knew
exactly what rules she was breaking and why it
was intentional. Right. She learned the structure
to deconstruct it. And that MFA date, 2009, that
lines up pretty closely with when her first plays
started getting serious attention. Exactly. Things
were starting to happen for her right around
then. But let's just circle back for a second
to that unexpected early job, the bachelor guest
wrangler thing, the In contrast with the kind
of art she's famous for, it's just massive. We
have to sit with that for a moment. We really
do. Because think about it. On one hand, you've
got reality TV. Right. High drama. Highly produced.
Edited for maximum conflict. Fast cuts. Explicit
narratives. Producer -driven storylines. Everything
is ramped up, even if the stakes are totally
manufactured. To your artifice, basically. And
then, on the other hand, you have Annie Baker's
plays, which are praised for being the polar
opposite. Low stakes, long silences, real -time
action, deliberately avoiding anything that feels
like manipulation or fake drama. So connecting
those dots, being a guest wrangler, the person
literally managing the contestants in that artificial
environment, that must have given her this incredibly
clear, maybe even cynical view of the gap between
performance, the face people put on under pressure,
and just... messy, unvarnished reality. You have
to think so. So when she later writes a play
like The Flick, where the main action is two
people silently sweeping up popcorn. Yeah, of
minutes on end. Right. She's making a conscious,
artistic choice against the loud, engineered
narratives of the world she saw in The Bachelor.
It's a deliberate rejection. So her naturalism
isn't just... like a style choice. It's almost
a philosophical commitment to authenticity may
be born from seeing the extreme opposite up close.
I think that's a great way to put it. She saw
performance and she chose quiet truth. Unflinching
slow truth. Okay, so let's move into that really
defining early period. This is where her unique
style gets established and where critics started
using that term anti -theatrical. We're talking
about her Shirley VT universe. Right, the fictional
small town in Vermont that anchors her first
few major plays. This is crucial for understanding
how her voice developed. Which plays are we talking
about specifically in the Shirley series? The
core ones are Body Awareness, that was 2008,
her off -Broadway debut, then Circle Mirror Transformation
in 2009, and The Aliens in 2010. These three
really laid out her territory. Ordinary people,
small town, often isolated lives. And what's
really striking is how quickly the theater world,
especially regionally, seemed to recognize that
these plays were connected, that this was a specific
project. Oh, totally. There was this amazing
moment, October, November 2010, three Boston
theater companies all decided to produce these
three Shirley plays at the same time. Wow. Which
companies? It was the Huntington Theatre Company,
Speakeasy Stage, and Company One, a major collaboration.
It showed this immediate belief in what she was
doing, this shared sense that her aesthetic was
something important right from the start. So
let's nail down that aesthetic. What is it? Why
did people immediately jump on this anti -theatrical
idea back in 2008? What does it actually feel
like for the audience? Well, the critics were
surprisingly consistent early on. Time Out New
York, back in 2008, they said she creates normal
individuals coping with everyday issues in their
small town lives. And crucially, they noted her
work aims for sincerity instead of just being
clever. Sincerity over cleverness. Yeah. That
feels key. Not witty banter, not shocking twists,
just... Truthfulness. Exactly. Behavioral truth.
And that sincerity leads directly to why people
started calling it anti -theatrical. The New
Yorker really hit it on the head. They said she
pioneered a style where life on stage is meant
to be so vivid, natural and emotionally precise
that it bleeds into the audience's visceral experience
of time and space. Wow. So it's theater trying
not to feel like theater. It wants to merge with
your own sense of time. Precisely. It refuses
to perform its theatricality. It's about radical
observation, like you said. Can you give us a
concrete example? What's a classic Baker moment
that illustrates this? Okay, a perfect example,
again from the flick. There's a stage direction,
I believe, that basically says a character sweeps
the floor for three minutes, silently, just sweeping
popcorn. Three whole minutes of sweeping. Yep.
In real time. No music, no cutting away. A conventional
play would speed through that, right? Or use
it for exposition. Baker makes you sit through
the sweeping. That insistence on the mundane
task, on not speeding up time, that's the core
of it. It challenges you, but it also makes the
moment incredibly real. Which means the audience
has to completely recalibrate their expectations.
The Daily Beast pointed this out. They said her
skill is making the audience work hard to figure
things out. It's demanding but enriching. And
they flat out said her stuff isn't for people
who want easy A leads to B plots and spoon fed
meanings. Right. It shifts your focus. You stop
asking what happens next and start asking what's
happening right now. Suddenly an awkward silence,
a nervous glance, a cough that becomes the drama.
She holds up a mirror. but holds it very still,
making us look at the parts of life we usually
edit out. And this challenging style didn't,
like, bomb. It got rewarded instantly. Circle
Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. They actually
shared the Obie Award for Best New American Play
in 2010. Shared it, which is rare. And The Aliens
was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn
Prize that same year. So major recognition very
early on. Okay, so she's defined by this hyper
-contemporary, small -town American naturalism.
Which makes her next move interesting. Adapting
a 19th century Russian classic. Seems like a
jump, right? But actually, it makes perfect sense
when you think about who she adapted. In 2012,
she did Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for Soho
Rep. Ah, Chekhov. Okay, that connection clicks.
He's the master of characters who talk about
doing things but never quite manage it, right?
The famous dramatic inertia. Exactly. Chekhov
is all about that deep inner life simmering beneath
the surface. People yearning for Moscow, yearning
for change, but stuck. Trapped in ennui and stasis.
Baker is totally his modern air. Translates that
same profound sadness and longing into contemporary
American speech patterns. She gets that sometimes
the hardest thing is just enduring the lack of
meaning. And her Vanya adaptation, it was directed
by Sam Gold, right? We'll talk more about him.
Yes, a crucial collaborator. We'll definitely
circle back to Gold. Their version was really
well received. The New York Times called it funky
fresh, which suggests her ear for natural dialogue
really worked, even on a classic text. And the
cast for that was pretty stellar, too, wasn't
it? Oh, incredible cast. Reed Burney played Vanya.
Michael Shannon played Astrov. Merritt Weaver
as Sonya, just top -tier actors drawn to that
style. I'm just fanning doing Quiet Desperation.
Yeah, I can picture that. It worked beautifully,
and Shannon and Weaver both won the Joey Calloway
Award for their performances in 2012. It really
proved Baker's approach wasn't just for her original
material. She could bring that same observational
intensity to interpreting the classics. Okay,
so if the Shirley plays established her style,
the moment it truly broke through, got that major
national validation, that was definitely the
flick. This is the play that cemented her as
a major, major voice. Premiered at Playwrights
Horizons March 2013. The flick. Right. Set in
that rundown movie theater. Just three employees,
right? A projectionist, two cleaners. Yep. And
they basically just talk. About movies, about
their lives, about nothing much, all while cleaning
up popcorn and dealing with this old 35mm projector.
And famously, it has those really long silences,
the real -time actions, sweeping, waiting. All
the Baker hallmarks? Exactly. But the level of
acclaim it got, especially considering how unconventional
it is, it was kind of staggering. She won the
Obie for playwriting in 2013. Okay, that makes
sense. The Obie's recognized downtown experimental
work. But then the next year, 2014, she wins
the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The Pulitzer? For
the flick? Yeah. That's huge. That's the establishment
saying this quiet, anti -theatrical style is
not just valid. It's among the best in American
drama. Monumental validation. And it kept going.
It won the Critics Circle Theater Award in London
for Best New Play in 2016. So it crossed the
Atlantic, too. It really proved this subtle,
observational thing could win the biggest prizes,
reach broad audiences. It changed the landscape.
Now, you mentioned Sam Gold earlier with Uncle
Vanya. We really need to underscore that partnership
here, don't we? Yeah. Because the flick was also
directed by him. Absolutely. We have to pause
and give major credit to Sam Gold. Their collaboration,
starting back with Circle Mirror Transformation
in 2009, running through Vanya the flick and
her next play, John. It's incredibly important.
Because for Baker's writing to land, the direction
has to be perfectly in sync, right? You need
someone who understands how to stage stillness,
how to manage that slow burn tempo without losing
the audience. Totally. The director has to trust
the silence, trust the actors, trust the audience.
Gold clearly speaks Baker's language. He knows
how to make that quietness resonate. And that
partnership continued with her next big play,
John, in 2015. That premiered at the Signature
Theatre, right? Correct. And that premiere was
significant in itself. It was the first play
under the Signature Theatre's Residency 5 program.
What's that involve? It's a huge deal. It guarantees
a playwright three world premiere productions
over five years. So Signature wasn't just saying
the flick was great. They were saying, we're
investing long -term in Annie Baker's entire
way of working. John was the first of those three,
and The Antipodes followed in 2017. Okay, so
John. This one moved away from Shirley, Vermont,
didn't it? Yeah, new setting. A big, maybe slightly
unsettling, bed and breakfast in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania. And it featured amazing actors
like Lois Smith and Georgia Engel. Georgia Engel,
wow. But the themes. Still very Baker. Oh, absolutely.
This is where you see her observational powers
really crystallize into exploring deep, universal
themes. The critics zeroed in on it. The New
York Times called it a haunting and haunted meditation
on topics she has made so singularly her own.
Which are? The omnipresence of loneliness in
human life and the troubled search for love and
lasting connection. Omnipresence of loneliness.
That hits hard. And it feels like maybe that's
why her work connects so deeply, even with the
slow pace. She lets you witness that quiet isolation,
those fumbling attempts to connect, things we
all feel but rarely see portrayed so honestly.
I think that's exactly right. And that universality
led to more major acclaim for John. It landed
on Time magazine's top 10 plays and musicals
list for 2015. The Hollywood Reporter also ranked
it as one of the best New York shows that year.
Okay, strong showing. But then there's this other
ranking. This one's kind of mind -blowing. Ah,
you mean the Time Out ranking. Yeah. The play
goes to the West End, opens at the National Theatre
in London in 2018, and then anti -propsed at
Time Out, apparently ranked John as the 40th
best play ever written. 40? Not top 40 of the
year or the decade. Ever. That's astonishing.
For a play written just a few years earlier,
known for its quiet realism. Putting it out there
with, like... The historical giants? It's monumental
praise. What it suggests is that critics saw
John as addressing something so fundamental about
the human condition, using such a unique and
effective method, that it transcended its contemporary
moment. It's a statement that this theater of
stillness, of quiet observation, has just as
much claim to greatness as traditional drama.
And again, the performances were recognized.
Georgia Engel won an Obie for her role in John,
right? She did, a 2016 Obie for performance,
and the whole production got a special citation
for collaboration, recognizing Baker, Gold, and
the design team together. Because creating that
specific, immersive, slightly unsettling atmosphere,
that's crucial to her work. It's a total package.
So moving into more recent years, the 2020s,
Annie Baker hasn't exactly been resting on her
laurels. She's continued with stage work, but
also made this really significant leap into a
whole new medium. Right. Still writing for the
stage, though. What's the latest there? Her most
recent play we have info on is Infinite Life.
That opened off -Broadway, Atlantic Theatre Company,
September 2023. And the critics seem to really
embrace it. descriptions like weird and great
new play. So still pushing boundaries, still
surprising people with her approach to structure.
Weird and great. Yeah. Sounds about right for
her. But the big news really was the film, wasn't
it? Janet Planet. Huge news. 2023, her feature
film directing debut. It's a coming of age story
produced by A24, which is already a signifier
of a certain kind of indie sensibility. A24,
yeah. Yeah. And it premiered at Telluride. Yep,
the 50th Telluride Film Festival. So, a prestigious
launch. This is a major shift, obviously, for
someone so deeply identified with live theater.
It really is. Moving from that shared space,
shared time of the theater where the audience
is kind of captive, physically present for the
silences, to cinema, which is mediated, framed,
edited. And she wrote it too, right? Not just
directed. Wrote and directed. Starring Julia
Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Sofia Canedo. Great cast.
So the big question everyone had was, Can that
signature Annie Baker style, the slowness, the
quiet, the anti -theatrical vibe actually translate
to film where audiences expect, you know, faster
cuts, more explicit emotional cues? That was
the question. And the industry certainly recognized
the effort and the quality. She got two Independent
Spirit Award nominations right off the bat, Best
First Feature and Best First Screenplay. That's
significant recognition for a debut. OK, so awards
nominations. What about the critics? How did
they react to Janet Planet? Well, this is where
it gets really interesting, because the reception
was kind of split, but split in a way that perfectly
reflects the nature of her work. Oh. On the one
hand, you had reviews like David Rooney's in
The Hollywood Reporter, totally glowing, called
it an exquisite debut, an oddball marvel of comparable
beauty. That suggests, yes, the precision, the
quiet depth, the long takes, it worked beautifully
for him. Okay, strong positive. But then you
had reviews like Thomas Lafley's for The Wrap.
more mixed, called it textured yet wearisome,
and specifically said it keeps the viewer at
arm's length. Wearisome? Ouch. But also... Kind
of understandable, maybe? Exactly. That criticism,
wearisome, points directly back to what critics
have always said about her plays. They're demanding.
They make you work hard. You go into her film
expecting a typical movie pace, her commitment
to real -time observation, her refusal to spell
things out, it could feel wearisome or distant
on screen. It's like the audience contract is
different. In a theater, you've committed, you
sit in the dark, you wait through the silence.
Watching a film, especially at home, the temptation
to speed up, to look away, is... much higher
and she's refusing to cater to that. She's absolutely
refusing. She's forcing the film viewer to meet
her halfway, just like she does with the theater
audience, but in a medium that's generally much
less patient. It really shows how deeply committed
she is to her artistic vision, regardless of
the format. That's the challenge she faces now,
isn't it? How to keep that slow, honest integrity
in film without alienating an audience conditioned
for speed. It'll be fascinating to see how she
navigates that. And just a quick side note before
we move on. She actually acted a little bit,
too. Right. Way back. Oh, yeah. A small thing.
Back in 2014, she played a character named Elise
in Noah Baumbach's film While We're Young. Interesting.
Another little foray into being in the performance
world. You know. Looking back at all the awards
and fellowships she's received, it really drives
home how much the establishment, the big arts
institutions, have actively supported her very
specific, non -traditional approach. It's not
just praise. It's tangible support. Right. And
the biggest one has to be the MacArthur Fellowship,
the Genius Grant in 2017. Absolutely. That's
$625 ,000 over five years, no strings attached.
That kind of funding is crucial. It literally
buys an artist the freedom to... take risks to
pursue work that isn't necessarily commercial
to stick to their guns. It's innovation funding
for the arts. And they came after other major
financial awards, too, like the Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2014. And the Steinberg Playwright Award in
2013, which included a $50 ,000 prize. It's a
clear pattern. The system recognizing the value
in her anti -theatrical method and wanting her
to keep doing it. It wasn't just money either,
right? Lots of residencies, development labs.
Oh, yes. Crucial for honing her craft. She was
at the Sundance Institute Theater Lab. twice,
2008 and 2014, and that second time she actually
directed her own play there, The Last of the
Little Hours. What was that one about? It follows
the daily routines of Benedictine monks. Again,
you see that focus on quiet discipline, the observation
of the mundane, the ritualistic. Makes sense.
Monks and silent movie theater workers. Maybe
not so different in her eyes. Could be. She also
had multiple McDowell Colony fellowships, and
she was a fellow at the New York Public Library's
Cullman Center. So recognition across the board,
from theater development to broader humanities
institutions, it shows her work is seen as having
real intellectual weight. And beyond creating
her own work, she's clearly very invested in
teaching and shaping the next wave of writers.
Hugely invested. Her teaching record is expensive.
She teaches playwriting at NYU, Barnard College,
the MFA programs at Stony Brook, Southampton
and Hunter College. Wow. Quite a list. And she's
currently an associate professor of practice
at the University of Texas at Austin in their
MFA playwriting directing program. So she's not
just influential through her play. She's actively
involved in training writers, passing on that
rigorous approach to making theater that feels
incredibly real, helping to codify hypernaturalism,
maybe. Finally, we should probably touch on her
public engagement as well. Based on the sources,
it seems like that commitment she has artistically
to witnessing things honestly, exploring connection,
it sometimes extends into public advocacy. It
does appear that way. And we'll just report these
instances factually as part of the overall portrait
without taking any stance ourselves. Right. Just
the facts from the sources. So in July 2017,
she was one of about 60 artists who signed an
open letter. It was organized by a group called
Adala NY, and it asked Lincoln Center to cancel
performances of a play that was sponsored by
the Israeli government. Okay. And more recently?
More recently, in 2023, she was among a group
of Jewish American writers who signed another
open letter, this one addressed to President
Biden, asking for a ceasefire. Got it. So instances
where she's joined with others to voice concerns
on larger political or human rights issues. It
does seem consistent in a way with a playwright
whose work is so focused on observing human situations,
whether micro level loneliness or macro level
conflict. So if we try to wrap this up, synthesized
her career so far, Annie Baker's really unique
contribution, it seems, isn't just that she wrote
brilliant plays. It's that she fundamentally
changed the conversation about what theater.
is or can be she insisted on using raw almost
overheard dialogue this intense naturalism yeah
that demands patience from the audience it does
but it rewards that patience with this incredibly
deep resonance by slowing down time by focusing
on what critics call that omnipresence of loneliness
she just holds up this incredibly clear mirror
to our own inner lives our own quiet moments
our own clumsy attempts at connection she proves
that massive drama doesn't always need shouting
or spectacle. It can exist in the pauses, in
the silences between the words. It's about authentic
human feeling. Exactly. Great theater as sincere
human connection, not just entertainment. Which
leads us to a final thought, maybe a question
for you, a listener to chew on. Given that she
has had this critical success, even if it was
mixed, translating that very distinctive, anti
-theatrical stage voice into her film debut,
Janet Planet. How is this dual identity going
to play out? She's a Pulitzer -winning playwright
who makes audiences sent through minutes of silence,
and she's now an acclaimed film director working
in a medium that usually hates silence and loves
speed. How will she keep challenging the boundaries
of engaging drama across both stage and screen?
That's the big question, isn't it? Which medium
is ultimately the better fit for her particular
brand of slow, quiet, observational genius? Or
can she make both work on her own terms? Something
to definitely keep an eye on. It'll be fascinating
to see what she does next.