Body Awareness

by Annie Baker

It's "Body Awareness" week on a Vermont college campus and Phyllis, the organizer, and her partner, Joyce, are hosting one of the guest artists in their home, Frank, a painter famous for his female nude portraits. Both his presence in the home and his chosen subject instigate tension from the start. Phyllis is furious at his depictions, but Joyce is actually rather intrigued by the whole thing, even going so far as to contemplate posing for him. As Joyce and Phyllis bicker, Joyce's adult son, who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to express himself physically with heartbreaking results.

Genres: Plays, Queer, LGBT, Drama, Theatre

72 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2009

About the author

Baker grew up in Amherst, Mass., and graduated from the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She earned her MFA from Brooklyn College.

Her play Body Awareness was staged off-Broadway by the Atlantic Theater Company in May and June 2008. The play featured JoBeth Williams and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award. Circle Mirror Transformation premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in October 2009 and received Obie Awards for Best New American Play and Performance, Ensemble. Her play The Aliens, which premiered off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in April 2010, was a finalist for the 2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and shared the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play with Circle Mirror Transformation.

Baker's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya premiered at the Soho Repertory Theatre in June 2012 and was called a "funky, fresh new production" by a New York Times reviewer. Her play The Flick premiered at Playwrights Horizons in March 2013. A New York Times reviewer wrote, "Ms. Baker, one of the freshest and most talented dramatists to emerge Off Broadway in the past decade, writes with tenderness and keen insight." The play received the Obie Award for Playwriting in 2013.

Baker teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. She was one of seven playwrights selected to participate in the 2008 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab. In 2011 she was named a Fellow of United States Artists.

Reviews

[Aaron Piccirillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

“This is great. Jared is going to get love and sex advice from the guy who single-handedly ruined Body Awareness Week.”

actual rating: 3.5/5

what i can say is that i love annie bakers writing and how natural and human it feels but i felt like there was just something missing from the show. it started off good but dragged a little in the middle but i’m sure this is a really interesting show to actually watch. all of the characters were interesting and it was nice how she kept everything very subtle. but the end scene was my favorite and it was so beautiful and heartwarming but also heartbreaking at the same time... idk how that’s possible but much love and appreciation for abbie baker.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

“there’s a right thing to do in this situation, i just have no idea what it is”

feels a lot like groundwork for baker’s later work (which i seem primed to love) but still pretty good! very funny in an incredibly natural way. can’t speak to its depiction of asperger’s, but the lashing out on the world bc of the rejection of self is Real. feels of it’s time in the ideas it’s engaging with (lots of discussion of the male gaze lol) but it engages with said ideas in a nuanced, dialectical manner that has me intrigued. reassertion of the self through art/others. the moments of startling beauty that break through this relatively standard fare have me so excited.

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know how she does it!! Baker can convey so much with so little. It’s a subtle, understated story that takes place over 5 days (body awareness week) but it hooks you with its natural dialogue and characterization and by the end you are moved.

[massmarketbareback · Rating 5 out of 5]

this may be my favourite of annie baker's plays. for something first performed in 2008 it is astonishingly current.

[Little Pomegranate]

do I want to AD this? # after the like rabbits heartbreak
ending v satisfying as is the overlap of *better* cog psych as prayer (thinking about blind insight & false enforcement a lot..)

slightly too human, autism theory of mind & how it applies to all minds (ie. in reverse too) aphantasia!?
Uta Frith & Simon BC & realising linking to lots of things because not sure how much intended vision is settling, so anchoring around
makes sense infinite life written by the same

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...

https://sociology.stanford.edu/public...

[Abigail Espinal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast-paced, frenetic, electric, and darkly humorous, “Body Awareness” is a play which leaves more questions than it does answers. But this is not necessarily negative. Story-wise, everything is clear as day. Symbolically and metaphorically, however…that is where Baker adds a hint of mystery, and this is where the play shines brightest! Characters are memorable, conflicts are tense, and the conclusion is quietly satisfy-ing yet loudly introspective. An impressive, short explosion of chaos you will not soon for-get.

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad -- I just didn't love it. It reminds me of Stephen Florida in all its awkward shamelessness. There's some things that don't go explored that I think should have been, like Joyce's experiences with her dad. We don't get too deep into any particular character's experience. I think there was too much time spent stagnant and it didn't really go anywhere. Again, not bad, but it wasn't really moving.

[JackWilliamRtF · Rating 3 out of 5]

the last of the vermont plays and the second of the two i've seen performed, i think so so much of body awareness is faaantastic. jared is a great character who stands alone, and joyce and phyllis play off of each other wonderfully, but i find so much of the frank stuff to fall flat. given that he's our antagonist, i would like to see more out of frank's character than just a relatively flat embodiment of The Male Gaze. and why the penis at the end annie, why.

3.5/5

[Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was like, “Oh, clearly this is the weakest play in the Vermont collection.” But then… that ending. Fuck. Annie Baker has a way of making the most unbearable losers—who might be played solely for humor in other plays—feel redeemable. She gives them their reversal, their moment. How lovely is that?

[Moon Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Baker says so much with so little. Body Awareness is a short play set over 5 days, the dialogue is natural and raw and creates a wonderfully understated story.
Language is outdated now and made me squirm a bit as an autistic person but it matches the time it was written and Jared is very well written.

[Castor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do love a play that opens with “Feel free to draw out the pauses, and make them really agonizing.” The story itself was interesting I suppose, and I almost wanted it to be longer because there was so much to explore. I'm not sure if I liked it, but it was good.

[Jessica Hirsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really great....when you view it from a 2009 lens. There's so many interesting layers to this piece (which is expected of Annie Baker) but the way the play deals with the portrayal of the autism spectrum definitely hasn't aged well - which makes it a little hard to fully get onboard.

[Kacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny and fresh but also unsettling in a curious way...

[Daniel Pivonka · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Lindsay Heller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this might be my favorite of the Vermont plays. They just kept getting better with each one.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Annie Baker plays. Humane, thoughtful, well-constructed, with a pretty wrenching depiction of some challenges in parenting a child on the autism spectrum.

[Brooks Whitlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

baker’s funniest

[Briana Burnside · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful story. I love plays that just capture everyday feelings and don’t push an agenda or crazy circumstances. It was raw, and left the story unfinished, just like our everyday lives.

[Anna Kefalas · Rating 3 out of 5]

and with that, the Annie Baker anthology is complete!

[Wiley June · Rating 4 out of 5]

actually like totally awesome

[isa · Rating 4 out of 5]

definitely in my play era. really enjoyed this. sometimes you just need to read only dialogue for a bit.

[Talla T · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Nicole Fegan · Rating 2 out of 5]

"sex, lies, and videotape" but worse and less interesting. my least favorite annie baker i've read so far (most of the others are great!!!)

[Em Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

great for scenes
1. joyce frank -- pg 62- 64
2. joyce phillys 57-60
3. jared frank pg 52-57
4. joyce phyllis 48-51
5. frank joyce 43-46
6. jared phyllis

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,75/5

[Lucien Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read with Ariel 😛but did not make it any less stale. Still an Annie Baker truther tho

[nay · Rating 4 out of 5]

found this incredibly charming in an incredibly annie baker way. love a guy who’s just like really into the OED.

[Allison Reding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great characters

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well written script, interesting voices, complicated, but accessible. It explores themes that are current and important.

Would recommend!

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

a rare misfire; read anything else of hers