MOST playwrights are afraid of silence. Much of life’s drama lurks in the gaps between words, but few know how to dramatise this for the stage. To handle silence properly, a writer must have a keen ear for the way people actually talk, with all the stammers, stumbles and speed bumps. It is only when these rhythms are understood that a playwright can convincingly convey what is left unsaid.
Annie Baker, a rising young writer for the theatre, is well attuned to the “ums” and “whatevers” of real speech. On the face of it, her plays seem uneventful. They feature ordinary people talking about ordinary things, often at great length and to no great purpose. “The Flick”, which won the Pulitzer prize in 2014 and is now being restaged at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York, consists of more than three hours of patter and griping among workers at a cinema as they clean between screenings. But the power of Ms Baker’s work—and what makes it stand apart—is the way every moment and hesitation feels acutely observed and quietly meaningful.
This attention to detail has earned her a...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1TxxSNy
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