The Drama and Theatre of Annie Baker

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.>

Auteur
Amy Muse is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. She is the author of The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl (Methuen Drama, 2018) and essays on dramatic literature, intimate theatre, and travel that have appeared in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Text & Presentation, Romanticism: The Journal of Romantic Culture & Criticism, Frontiers, and The Journal of Greek Media and Culture.Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. is professor of theatre arts at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA, the author and editor of ten books including The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films, and a contributor to numerous volumes on sci-fi, pop culture and religion, including essays on Godzilla, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. His areas of expertise include Japanese theatre, African theatre, Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, stage combat and comedy. He is co-editor with Patrick Lonergan of Bloomsbury Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series.Patrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway, Ireland.