Annie Baker's BODY AWARENESS Starts at IWU Tonight

Annie Baker is at the top of the list when it comes to current American playwrights. Her voice as a playwright is understated, but distinct and uncompromising, with a reliance on silence, hesitation and rhythms that sound like people we recognize. In Central Illinois, Heartland Theatre and the Station have both done Circle Mirror Transformation, one of her trio of plays set in the fictional town of Shirley, Vermont, and farther afield, her Pulitzer Prize winner, The Flick, just enjoyed a successful run at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

Body Awareness, Baker's first play produced Off-Broadway and the first play she set in Shirley, opens tonight at Illinois Wesleyan University’s E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre. Directed by IWU senior Maggie Patchett, Body Awareness is only here for three performances, beginning at 8 pm tonight through Monday.

The play takes place during "Body Awareness Week" at a fictional college in Shirley, Vermont. We meet psychology professor Phyllis, one of the organizers behind "Body Awareness Week," along with her partner Joyce, a high school teacher, and Joyce’s 21-year-old son Jared. Jared is smart, but he is also socially awkward, with enough issues that Phyllis and Joyce suspect he has Asperger’s. He is not in any way interested in therapy, although he would like to meet women. Uncertain how to approach that idea, he asks for advice from Frank, a photographer who is their house guest for the week while he serves as a visiting artist on the topic of Body Awareness. Frank specializes in nude photos of women, which does not endear him to Phyllis, who has social problems of her own, including being overbearing and pretentious. And Joyce is caught in the middle, trying to get along with everybody. Things are pretty tense from the get-go for this group, as you might imagine. For IWU, Emily Hardesty plays Phyllis, while Katelyn Van Petten takes the role of Joyce, Isaiah Rosales plays Jared, and Tuxford Turner is Frank.

For more information on the IWU School of Theatre Arts production of Body Awareness, click here.

Annie Baker's THE FLICK Takes the Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2014

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama for 2014 has gone to Annie Baker's play The Flick, which played at Playwrights Horizons in early 2013. The Pulitzer is awarded to "a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life." In choosing it, the Pulitzer committee described The Flick as "a thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theater, rendering lives rarely seen on the stage." The Playwrights Horizons run was directed by frequent Annie Baker collaborator Sam Gold.

The Flick garnered praise from critics like Charles Isherwood in The New York Times, who noted that this "lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness, and probably stay there for a while." Other prominent sources were equally enamored of the play, and it won Baker an Obie as well as the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

But it was not without its detractors. Baker purposely wrote a play without traditional theatrical action, where characters are revealed through menial, everyday activities ("walking and sweeping and mopping and dust-pan banging," according to Baker) and by what they don't say as much as what they do. She wrote about characters -- regular old people -- she felt are often left out of American theater, and she let The Flick spool out in its own time, which was about three hours. With the combination of length, languid pace and frequent silences, some Playwrights Horizons' patrons complained, walked out at intermission and threatened to cancel their subscriptions. And then Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Tim Sanford sent an email blast to all 3000 subscribers to explain why and how The Flick suited the new-play and playwright focused theater and why they were standing behind it even in the face of so much criticism. No apologies, just an explanation. Still, that's not something that happens every day.

Given all of that, the Pulitzer committee seems to be telling us that they are behind game-changers and boundary-breakers like Annie Baker and The Flick.

It is worth noting that the other two nominees for this year's Pulitzer were also created by female theater artists. Those runners-up were Madeleine George's The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, "a cleverly constructed play that uses several historical moments -- from the 1800s to the 2010s – to meditate on the technological advancements that bring people together and tear them apart," and the musical Fun Home, with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and music by Jeanine Tesori, which the Pulitzer site calls "a poignant musical adaptation of a graphic memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, exploring sexual identity amid complicated family constraints and relationships." Fun Home enjoyed a Public Theatre production that starred Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris and three-time Tony Award-nominee Judy Kuhn.

Both The Flick and Fun Home made Playbill's list of possibilities for the Pulitzer, but Watson Intelligence, another Playwrights Horizons show, was perhaps less expected. In another interesting footnote, playwrights Lisa Kron and Madeleine George are a couple, married last year, meaning there are two Pulitzer citations in their household in 2014.

PS Classics has produced a cast recording for Fun Home if you're interested in revisiting or understanding its "shining clarity that lights up the night."

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION Returns Tonight at Heartland Theatre

Heartland Theatre's Circle Mirror Transformation, the lovely, luminous little comedy by Annie Baker, finishes up its performance schedule this weekend, with shows tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Pantagraph reviewer Patricia Stiller called the production, directed by Cyndee Brown, "refreshingly honest" as she noted "not caring is not an option" when it comes to the very real folks who populate Circle Mirror Transformation. "We hurt when they hurt, and cheer when they rally," Stiller wrote about the flawed, vulnerable characters portrayed by Julia Besch, Dean Brown, Cristen Monson, Cathy Sutliff and Aaron Thomas.

Besch, Brown, Monson and Thomas are portraying four regular people who take an Adult Drama class from an instructor named Marty, played by Sutliff, at a community center in Shirley, Vermont. Shirley is a fictional town created by Annie Baker and used in three of her plays, but it doesn't seem very different from Bloomington or Normal as seen in Circle Mirror Transformation. For these people, their weekly class functions almost as therapy, as they go through simple acting exercises that expose their dreams as well as their flaws, that reveal their individual personalities as well as forge a group identity. Finding yourself and finding each other is what Circle Mirror Transformation is all about.

Cristen Monson (center) performing an exercise in Circle Mirror Transformation

Baker is one of the hottest playwrights around, with awards and productions at every turn. Circle Mirror Transformation was chosen as one of the top ten plays of 2010 for the Best Plays Theater Yearbook and it became the second-most-performed play of the 2009-10 season. It's a perfect match for Heartland Theatre, both because Heartland's space is inside a community center much like the one in Shirley and because the theater has always been run by people like Marty, people who understand and appreciate the significance of theater education. Managing Artistic Director Mike Dobbins, who passed away in July, was one of those people, director Cyndee Brown is another, and sponsor D. Ann Jones is a third. The Young at Heartland program for senior actors that Jones helped guide for a time uses some of the same exercises you'll see in the play as they build their troupe.

And speaking of those exercises... Due to weather issues (and a decided lack of power during last Sunday's terrible storms), the Sunday performance and discussion afterwards were both canceled. But Cyndee Brown has volunteered to come back after this Sunday's matinee to illuminate the exercises in the play and talk a little about how theater games work. Brown plans this as an interactive experience for audience members who come for the talkback, and you'll want to be there if you've seen the show and had questions about Explosion Tag, When I Go to India or the Circle Mirror Transformation exercise on stage. If you haven't seen the show yet, it's even more imperative to get there for one of these last four performances, before the curtain falls on this beautiful little play that so eloquently demonstrates the sense of community and exploration that Heartland Theatre is all about.

Circle Mirror Transformation continues through Sunday, November 14, at Heartland Theatre in Normal. Performances are scheduled for tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday afternoon at 2 pm. Click here for reservation information.

CIRCLE MIRROR Is Back, Including a Talkback Post-Show on Sunday

Heartland Theatre's production of Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation returns to the stage tonight with a 7:30 pm performance, followed by Friday and Saturday evening performances and a Sunday matinee at 2 pm. The Sunday show will be followed by a talkback with director Cyndee Brown, as Brown steps in front of the curtain to discuss one of the central issues in Baker's sweet, sad, funny play -- the transformative power of theater and theater classes.

Circle Mirror Transformation involves an "adult drama" class at a community center in Vermont, where four very different students -- a high school girl who wants to get a jump on the lead in West Side Story, a socially inept carpenter coming off a bad divorce, an actress from New York coming off a bad relationship of her own, and the teacher's husband, only there to fill out the class -- go through a series of theater games with their instructor, a woman named Marty who teaches jewelry and pottery classes, too. Baker has constructed the play to reveal who they are slowly and gently, through the seemingly goofy exercises they play.

Cristen Monson (center) offers a monologue in Circle Mirror Transformation

Non-theater people may wonder about those exercises, echoing "I don't get what the point is" along with Lauren, the teenager, who demands to know if they are ever going to do any acting. Theater people, on the other hand, may be cringing as they remember endless hours spent lying on the floor in community centers and empty dance studios, counting out loud, playing "When I Go to California" or explosion tag, just like the characters. Both groups should benefit from the talkback session, where Cyndee Brown will lead a discussion of who Annie Baker is and why she wrote her play this way, with maybe even a demonstration of a game or two, if we're lucky.

Whether you choose to stick around for the discussion or not, you'll definitely want to see Circle Mirror Transformation, one of the most popular plays of the past few years, while it's still available in Bloomington-Normal. Its characters, so subtly drawn, so vulnerable, so flawed, are what makes it stand out in my mind.

For Heartland, Cathy Sutliff plays Marty, the instructor leading her students into discovery and self-exploration, while Dean Brown plays her congenial husband, James; Cristen Monson takes on Theresa, who is very good at a lot of things but very bad at relationships; Aaron J. Thomas as Schultz, the awkward carpenter; and Julia Besch as Lauren, the smart and insightful teen in their midst.

You can find out more about the play here, or proceed directly to show times or reservation information. Circle Mirror Transformation continues at Heartland Theatre through November 24.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION Opens Tomorrow at Heartland

Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation was a sensation during and after its run at Playwrights Horizon in 2009, called "the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word" as well as "absorbing, unblinking and sharply funny" by the New York Times.

Baker sketches out her characters, opening them like flowers, through the device of six weeks of "adult drama" classes at a small community center in Vermont. We only see these five people -- teacher Marty; her seemingly good-natured husband James; Theresa the "real" actress from New York; recently divorced Schultz, a carpenter who is somewhat inept socially; and Lauren, a high-school student who just may be wiser than the adults around her -- only in the studio where they take their class, in conversation here and there, and in the exercises they take on under Marty's direction. Baker's dialogue often sounds fragmented and broken, just like real people talk, often unassuming, as if nothing much is really being said. But there's a lot there if you listen carefully and let Baker's unique rhythms and tone weave their spell, a lot about how difficult it is to bridge the gaps between and among people, how inevitable it is to change, how complicated it is to be flawed and vulnerable and yet to keep trying to connect, anyway.

Theresa (Cristen Monson, top) reveals secrets to fellow acting students

What's beautiful about the script is how all of that unfolds right before your eyes in small moments. Some of those moments are funny, some are awkward (Baker loves awkward) and some are heartbreaking. If you let yourself fall into the play, you'll find it packs quite an emotional punch by the end.

For Heartland Theatre, Cyndee Brown directs this award-winning play, one that was chosen for the 2010 Best Plays Yearbook and hit the top of the lists of the most-produced plays in America in 2010. Brown is herself a theatre educator, so she understands what it is to see students transformed and enlightened by the "theatre games" they play. Brown's cast includes Cathy Sutliff, most recently seen at Heartland as a no-nonsense police officer in Superior Donuts, as Marty; Dean Brown, who played artist Mark Rothko in Red as James; Cristen Monson, fresh off the role of Desiree in Prairie Fire's A Little Night Music, as Theresa; Aaron J. Thomas, seen in two of Heartland's 10-Minute Plays last summer, as Schultz; and ISU student Julia Besch, who appeared in J.B. in Westhoff Theatre, as Lauren. It's a strong cast, with strong and sure direction, in a play that very much suits Heartland Theatre, which is itself located inside a community center.

There are a lot of entertainment options this week, with a big musical, two of the best plays of the 90s (and maybe the 20th century) and a nationally known humorist on stage, but it would be a major mistake for theatre lovers to overlook Annie Baker's "lovely, luminous" Circle Mirror Transformation at Heartland. This is a play you have to make room for.

For more information on the Heartland production, click here, or you may choose to proceed directly to showtimes or reservation info.

Circle Mirror Transformation opens with a Pay-What-You-Can Preview tomorrow at 7:30 pm, followed by 7:30 performances on November 8-9, 14-16 and 21-23, with Sunday matinees at 2 pm on the 17th and 24th. Note that an after-play discussion will be offered on November 17, with director Cyndee Brown giving the backstage scoop on the show as well as taking questions.

What's Coming Up From Heartland Theatre Company in 2013-14

Heartland Theatre Company has announced the schedule for its 2013-14 season, and it's full of mystery, secrets, deception and relationship drama.

Heartland's season will begin in June with the Annual 10-Minute Play Festival, every year presenting eight new short plays by winning playwrights from around the globe. This year's theme is "The Package,” with each play somehow involving a package, parcel or gift.

Next up is the Douglas Post play Earth and Sky, a tense psychological thriller, set for performances in September, 2013, and then Annie Baker's award-winning Circle Mirror Transformation, a sweet and insightful play about the members of an acting class, scheduled to hit Heartland's stage in November.

After the holiday break, Heartland will be back in February, 2014, with Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, a look at a privileged family with secrets, and Scottish playwright Rona Munro's Iron, moving mother-daughter drama inside a women's prison, in April, 2014.

Heartland's season announcement notes that flex passes to cover this whole season go on sale on April 30th. You can see all the details here.

In the meantime, here's the rundown of shows to whet your appetitie:

Annual 10-Minute Play Festival: THE PACKAGE
June, 2013
Packages have been used as McGuffins in more plays, movies and TV shows than you can fit inside the largest box UPS will deliver. But it’s what’s inside the parcel that counts, whether it’s mysterious microfilm, memories of the past, the key to your heart, an urn full of ashes, a dangerous snake or somebody else’s cheesecake. There’s plenty of dramatic potential inside every package!

EARTH AND SKY by Douglas Post
September, 2013
Doug Post’s neo-noir thriller opens when Sara McKeon, a “would-be poet and part-time librarian” is told that her lover, David, has been killed while involved in terrible crimes. How can she believe what the police are telling her? How can she not? EARTH AND SKY will keep you on the edge of your seat as it vaults from love to betrayal, from mystery to deception, from truth to lies.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION by Annie Baker
November, 2013
This look at a hapless acting class in a small town in Vermont was chosen as one of the Best Plays of 2010. There’s warmth and humor as well as all kinds of insight in this lovely piece about the power of seemingly silly acting exercises like the circle and the mirror to transform the lives of the people willing to leap into them.

OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz
February, 2014
The wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs enjoy access to the highest levels of American life. But then daughter Brooke comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about the family’s murky secrets. Baitz is a specialist when it comes to dysfunctional families, and OTHER DESERT CITIES, a nominee for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, is one of the best.

IRON by Rona Munro
April, 2014
Fay has spent the last 15 years in prison for murdering her husband. When her daughter Josie visits for the first time after all these years, she wants to know why it happened, what he did, what her mum did. She can’t even remember what her dad looked like. But there are no easy answers in Munro’s wrenching look at the justice and injustice in crime and punishment.

Annie Baker Wins the 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for THE FLICK

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to honor and celebrate female playwrights who "have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre," was given to Annie Baker this week for her play The Flick.

The Flick is currently enjoying an extended run at Playwrights Horizon in New York. That's the same theater that produced Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation, chosen as one of the Best Plays of 2010 and honored with an Obie Award as Best New Play.

Playwrights Horizon describes The Flick this way: "In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees mop the floors and attend to one of the last 35 millimeter film projectors in the state. Their tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lackluster, second-run movies on screen. With keen insight and a finely-tuned comic eye, The Flick is a hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world."

Like Baker's other plays, The Flick uses humor, insight and a sweet touch with the human heart to comment on how we communicate. Or try. Writing about The Flick for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood called Annie Baker "one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade," as he noted that "this lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness, and probably stay there for a while."

The other nine finalists for the 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize were:

Karen Ardiff for The Goddess Of Liberty
Jean Betts for Genesis Falls
Deborah Bruce for The Distance
Katherine Chandler for Before It Rains
Amy Herzog for Belleville
Dawn King for Foxfinder
Laura Marks for Bethany
Jenny Schwartz for Somewhere Fun
Francine Volpe for The Good Mother

Ardiff is Irish, while Bruce, Chandler and King are from the United Kingdom, Baker, Herzog, Marks, Schwartz and Volpe are American, and Betts hails from New Zealand.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. The winner receives a prize of $20,000 plus a signed and numbered Willem de Kooning print made especially for the award. Other finalists are awarded $1,000 each.