Award winning new play comes to Dartington
9th March 2022
AWARD-WINNING NEW PLAY FROM TALENTED YOUNG AMERICAN WRITER COMES TO DARTINGTON
Dartington Playgoers are delighted to be performing Circle Mirror Transformation, a funny and insightful play by Annie Baker at Studio 31 Dartington March 30th to Aril 2nd 2022. Circle Mirror Transformation is one of Annie Baker’s Shirley Vermont Plays. Shirley being a fictional town that Baker has imaginatively created and populated. The play is set in a community centre, where five unlikely strangers join a creative drama class for adults led by the free-spirited Marty.
The group – recently divorced Schulz, former actress Teresa, the self-conscious high school student Lauren, and Marty’s unassuming husband, James – embark on a unique six-week journey of games and exercises ranging from the heart-breaking to the ridiculous. The games might seem trivial at first but we start to see the human condition reveal itself often in its most vulnerable and uncomfortable state. The results are humorous and sometimes devastating. This insightful play takes the audience from the comic to the tragic in equal measure. This is a play about the power of theatre and its potential to change our lives.
Annie Baker has gained much recognition for her work. A young American playwright her play The Flick won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, and she is a MacArthur Fellow who currently teaches Theatre at New York University. She is considered one of the most talented playwrights to have emerged in recent years. This quiet masterpiece Circle Mirror Transformation won the 2010 Obie Award for Best New Play and was voted one of the top 10 plays of 2009 by the New York Times, Time Out, and The New Yorker and Playgoers are thrilled to be bringing her work to Dartington in 2022.
The production is directed by Annie Bowie, who was Head of Drama for many years at King Edward VI Community College in Totnes and she says “Annie Baker’s play is essentially about being human, and the writing encourages performers to reflect on elements of themselves and their relationships with others – always with kindness and good humour. It is great to be working with Playgoers
again!”
Annie’s work for the Playgoers includes Assembly Women, King Lear; What the Butler Saw and The Man Who..