Beccy Thompson provides a summary of the playwright Annie Baker's works and methods, which focus heavily on slow theatre.
Annie Baker is a playwright from Massachusetts, known for work that explores the complexities of everyday life. In recent years, her plays have been staged at the National Theatre, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flick, John, Infinite Life and The Antipodes. Her style has been referred to as ‘hyper-naturalistic’ and ‘slow theatre’; ordinary events are illuminated and serve as the basis for her productions.
Baker has cited Chekhov, Beckett and Churchill as influences on her writing. In Amy Muse's book on her work (2024), Barker plays homage to a chance visit in the 1990s to Richard Foreman's Ontological Hysteric Theatre in New York's East Village, explaining that ‘somehow Oscar Wilde plus Guys and Dolls plus people behind a glass wall hitting each other on the heads with plastic hammers made me love theatre’.
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