annie baker

“Annie Baker’s John is so good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light… By not rushing things—by letting the characters develop as gradually and inevitably as rain or snowfall—Baker returns us to the naturalistic but soulful theatre that many of her contemporaries and near-contemporaries have disavowed in their rush to be 'postmodern.'”
– New Yorker

“John, like any great play, raises a lot of questions–not just about the human experience, but also about the state of contemporary theater, it doesn’t provide many answers; it is not the playwright’s responsibility to do so.… In John she co-opts the viewer for her own aesthetic use, heightening the tension onstage and deepening the quiet relationships between her characters. Through John, she displays an understanding that the audience is part of the theatrical experience, an inevitability as certain as a Chekhovian gun.” – Slate


The week after Thanksgiving. A bed & breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A cheerful innkeeper. A young couple struggling to stay together. Thousands of inanimate objects, watching.

The description by the playwright of the setting is simple, but Annie Baker’s compelling new work is revolutionary in theme and structure and challenges the boundaries of what theatre can be. A kind of magical super-realism permeates throughout this quietly evolving tale, with both the actors and the audience fully vested together in a mesmerizing exploration of the frailty and loneliness of human experience.

Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

“Funny, heartbreaking, sly and unblinking…The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity and profound uniqueness of theater.” —Jesse Green, New York

“Hilarious and ineffably touching…Ms. Baker’s peerless aptitude for exploring how people grope their way toward a sense of equanimity, even as they learn to accept disappointment, is among the things that make her such a gifted writer…This lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness.” —Charles Isherwood, New York Times

“This hypnotic, heartbreaking micro-epic about movies and moving on is irreducibly theatrical.” —David Cote, TimeOut New York

In a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country’s most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

ANNIE BAKER’S works include The Aliens (Obie Award), Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award), Nocturama, and an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Her work has been produced at more than a hundred theaters in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries. Recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Steinberg Playwright Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. She is a resident playwright at Signature Theatre.

"Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theater today... There is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation." --Charles Isherwood, New York Times

"Baker has a soft spot for the abandoned, the discarded, the hard luck case... her heartbreaking works of staggering focus have actually rescued realism from the aesthetic scrap heap" -- Helen Shaw, Time Out New York

"Baker is a writer whose plays have a quiet, hypnotic charm, a grace and humor. She's able to take ordinary, low-key situations--a small-town acting class, guys wasting time in an alley behind a cafe--and fill them with gentle comedy, generosity of spirit and an eye (and ear) for the foibles that make us all so hopelessly human." --Village Voice

The debut play collection of Annie Baker includes The Aliens: an exploration of friendship and music in the lives of three misfits behind a coffee shop; Circle Mirror Transformation: a meditation on life within the rhythms of an adult drama class; Nocturama: A dark comedy in which a grown son returns home to live with his mother and stepfather; and Body Awareness: a close look at a nontraditional family dealing with an unexpected guest.

Annie Baker's other plays include The Flick and an adaptation of Uncle Vanya. She won an Obie Award for Best New American Play for The Aliens and Circle Mirror Transformation. She is a 2011 United States Artists Fellow and a resident playwright at the Signature Theatre.