The cast of Circle Mirror Transformation from left, Marin Hinkle, Arye Gross, Lily Holleman, Brian Kerwin and Linda Gehringer.

Annie Baker: Transforming the Everyday

by Kelly L. Miller

Playwright Annie Baker and director Sam Gold took New York by storm last season, winning OBIE awards for their Off-Broadway collaborations on her plays Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens (for Best New American Plays and Director, respectively). South Coast Repertory is thrilled to reunite them to stage the West Coast premiere of Ms. Baker’s intimate ensemble comedy, which garnered rave reviews for its smart, subtle dramatization of everyday people taking a drama class in small-town Vermont.

New York Times critic Charles Isherwood called Circle Mirror Transformation a “small, quirky, immensely lovable new play” and Variety dubbed it “a beguiling little play” in which “humor and poignancy are coaxed forth, love swells and recedes, and guarded people step into the light, all of which is orchestrated with a subtlety and unfailing naturalness that make the play’s small revelations disarming and unexpected.”

In the past year, Annie Baker has emerged as a formidable new voice in the American theatre—a talented, young playwright lauded for writing a new kind of naturalism for the stage. Stylistically, her plays are distinguished by her characters’ imperfect, halting dialogue—and her ability to meticulously capture the awkwardness and silences implicit in everyday life.   Her recent plays—Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens (which are all set in the same fictional town of Shirley, Vermont)—are as much about what people don’t say, as what they do. They’re not conventional, action-driven comedies, (á la Noel Coward or Neil Simon), but character-driven plays in which your understanding of their characters and worlds evolve slowly over time.

Playwright Annie Baker

The story of Circle Mirror Transformation unfolds organically on stage, through a series of acting exercises performed by a group of small-town residents taking a creative drama class at their local community center. Information about the play’s characters emerges gradually, as they engage in theater games and conversation. The class is taught by a kind-hearted drama teacher named Marty, who’s joined by her husband James, a mellow, middle-aged hippie; Schultz, a newly divorced carpenter; Theresa, a former actress who recently relocated from Manhattan; and Lauren, a sullen teenager taking the class in hopes of landing a role in the upcoming high school production of West Side Story.  Over the course of six weeks, the classmates connect and collide—and the play traces the quiet profundity of their relationships and emotional revelations.

Critics have lauded the subtle dialogue and cumulative revelation of Ms. Baker’s plays. After seeing three of her Shirley, Vermont, plays presented in a Boston festival (including Circle Mirror Transformation), New York Times critic Ben Brantley observed: “In Ms. Baker’s small, vast and meticulously detailed universe, words are by their very nature inadequate. So even when people are talking up a storm, you’re conscious of the void that separates them, filled with frustrated thoughts and hopes of connection.” Ms. Baker, he said: “has as natural an ear for how people really talk—and shut up—as any American playwright of recent years.”

Ms. Baker has explained her fascination with capturing the imperfection of everyday language on stage this way:  “The way human beings speak is so heartbreaking to me—we never sound the way we want to sound. We’re always stopping ourselves in mid-sentence because we’re so terrified of saying the wrong thing. Speaking is a kind of misery. And I guess I comfort myself by finding the rhythms and accidental poetry in everyone’s inadequate attempts to articulate their thoughts.”

About the Artists Director Sam Gold. Following a hat-trick of critically-acclaimed productions in New York last season, director Sam Gold has emerged as one of the most sought after directors of new plays in the country.  Extolling the subtlety of his work, The New York Times has complimented his “delicate direction,” praising his “uncommon skill at revealing the minutiae of real people experiencing real life, rendering the most delicate of plays emotionally robust.”  Gold returns to SCR after directing a reading of Bathsheba Doran’s new play Kin in the 2010 Pacific Playwrights Festival this past spring.  Gold’s recent directing credits include productions regionally and Off-Broadway for Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre Company, which recently named him an Associate Artist. Mr. Gold has assembled an exceptional cast for the West Coast premiere of Circle Mirror Transformation, including SCR favorites Linda Gehringer (The Language Archive, Doubt and many others) as Marty, Arye Gross (Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Brooklyn Boy) as Schultz, Marin Hinkle (Our Mother’s Brief Affair, What They Have) as Theresa, and Brian Kerwin (Tracy Letts’ Man From Nebraska) as James.  SCR newcomer Lily Holleman (Bleed Rail and God Save Gertrude, The Theatre @ Boston Court) completes the company as Lauren.  Gold's creative team includes scenic designer David Zinn, costume designer Angela Balogh Calin, lighting designer Mark Barton and sound designer Leah Gelpe.

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