If I think back to every rehearsal process for every play I've ever worked on, there's just so much crying at home. I barely sleep. There are moments of deep despair and anxiety, and then there are moments in rehearsal that are the most exhilarating; feeling seen and seeing everybody. Feeling like you have a purpose on the planet. A huge part of the process I enjoy is watching the actors figuring out what they can handle and what they can take and what they need from the director and me.
Annie BakerI ended up becoming a playwright because you can be grammatically incorrect: people speaking in bad poetry or people attempting to speak well and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. The whole imperfection of it suddenly felt freeing to me.
Annie BakerI think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.
Annie BakerI was 22 and stopped writing plays, and I didn't start again until I was 25. I was writing badly. In college, I attempted to write these more conventional plays, but the theater I loved was downtown experimental theater. I didn't feel like I could do that either. It didn't occur to me to do my own thing.
Annie Baker