Circle Mirror Transformation
- Written by Annie Baker
- Directed by Sam Gold
ANNIE BAKER's full-length plays include CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), THE ALIENS (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Obie Award for Best New American Play), BODY AWARENESS (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA, for which she also designed the costumes (Soho Rep). Her plays have been produced outside of NYC at South Coast Rep, the Guthrie, Victory Gardens, Artists Rep, Huntington Theater Company, Seattle Rep, Studio Theatre in DC, Hyde Park Theatre, Kansas City Rep, Marin Theater Company, A Red Orchid, and over 100 other theaters across the country. Her work has also been produced internationally in England, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Latvia, and Russia. She is a member of New Dramatists, MCC’s Playwrights Coalition and EST, and she is an alumna of Youngblood, Ars Nova’s Play Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Recent honors include a residency at the Signature Theater, USA Artists Fellowship, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Lilly Award, Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, Yaddo fellowship, and a Master Artist Residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. A published anthology of her work, THE VERMONT PLAYS, is available from TCG books. Upcoming projects include a production of CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION (or what the Russians call “ROTATING MIRRORS”) at the Moscow Art Theatre. (As of December 2012)
Photo by Zack DeZon
When four lost New Englanders enrolled in Marty’s community center drama class experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. Annie Baker’s new comedy is a beautifully crafted diorama, a petri dish in which we see, with terrific detail and clarity, the hilarious sadness of a motley quintet.
Featuring
Reed Birney
Tracee Chimo
Peter Friedman
Deirdre O'Connell
Heidi Schreck
Has appeared at Playwrights Horizons eight times, most recently in Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation directed by Sam Gold. He was just in Tigers Be Still at Roundabout Underground. For the NewYork premiere of Sarah Kane’s Blasted at Soho Rep, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. He was Dr. Sweet in the original New York cast of Bug and played Tony Blair in Stuff Happens at The Public Theater. He has received three Obie Awards and a Drama Desk Award. On film, he can be seen in Changeling and the current Morning Glory with Harrison Ford, as well as Jeff Lipsky’s Twelve Thirty. In February he will be in David West Read’s The Dream of the Burning Boy at Roundabout Underground. (As of December 2010)
Tracee Chimo has appeared on stage, in television, and in film. Broadway: The Heidi Chronicles, Harvey, Irena's Vow. Off-Broadway: Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Bad Jews, The Break of Noon, Irena's Vow, Bachelorette. Television: "Royal Pains", "Black Box", "Orange is the New Black", "The Good Wife", "The Money", "Louie". Film: "Gods Behaving Badly", "He's Way More Famous Than You", "The Five Year Engagement". Tracee has recieved a Drama Desk Award, an OBIE award, and two Lucille Lortel Award nominations for her work.
Playwrights Horizons: After the Revolution, The Great God Pan (Amy Herzog); Circle Mirror Transformation (Annie Baker); The Shaggs (Gregory, Lang, Madsen); Fly By Night (Connolly, Mitnick, Rosenstock); The Heidi Chronicles (Wendy Wasserstein). Broadway: Ragtime (Ahrens, Flaherty, McNally), The Heidi Chronicles, Twelve Angry Men, The Tenth Man. Other Off-Broadway: Sundown, Yellow Moon (Bonds); Her Requiem (Pierce); The Nether (Haley); End Days (Laufer); Jacuzzi (The Debate Society); The Open House (Eno); The Hatmaker’s Wife (Yee); Body Awareness (Baker, and her adaptation of) Uncle Vanya; Hamlet (The Public, 2017). Film: The Savages, Safe, Single White Female. TV: “High Maintenance,” “The Muppet Show,” “The Affair,” “The Path.”
(as of 8/24/17)
Playwrights: Circle Mirror Transformation, Manic Flight Reaction, Moe‘s Lucky Seven, Spatter Pattern. Broadway: Dana H (Tony Award nomination, Obie, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle awards), Magic/Bird. Off-Broadway: The Way West, Thinner Than Water (Labyrinth); By the Water, Fulfillment
Center (MTC); Judy (Page73); In the Wake (The Public), Scarcity (Rattlestick); Terminus (NYTW). Regional: Before the Meeting (Williamstown). Film: Diane, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. TV: “The Affair,” “The Path,” “Outer Range.” Awards: Obie Award for Sustained Excellent in Performance, New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, Lily Award.
Heidi Schreck is a playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor. Her first play Creature was produced in New York in by New Georges and Page 73 in a well-received production directed by Leigh Silverman; her second There Are No More Big Secrets, directed by Kip Fagan, premiered at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and was a New York Magazine and Time Out New York’s Critic’s pick. Most recently, The Long Wharf produced her dark recession-era comedy, The Consultant, which was developed at Playwrights and also directed by Fagan. A former Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and Sundance artist, Heidi is currently working on commissions for South Coast Repertory Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan Foundation, and True Love Productions. Grand Concourse marks her return to Playwrights Horizons after appearing as an actor in Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (Theatre World Award) in 2010. She has also performed extensively at theaters such as The Public (Shakespeare in the Park), Manhattan Theatre Club, Two-Headed Calf, The Foundry, Clubbed Thumb, The Women’s Project, The Roundabout, Williamstown, Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group. On television, Heidi has appeared on The Good Wife, SVU, and Showtimes' Nurse Jackie, where she has also worked as a writer. Heidi is Playwrights Horizons’ first Tow Foundation playwright in residence.
Creative Team
David Zinn
Scenic Designer & Costume DesignerMark Barton
Lighting DesignerLeah Gelpe
Sound DesignerAlaina Taylor
Production Stage ManagerPlaywrights Horizons: Hir, The Flick (Drama Desk nomination, also Barrow Street and National Theater, UK), Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin, The Big Meal, Completeness, Placebo. Broadway: A Doll’s House Part 2 (costumes, Tony nom.), Amelie; Present Laughter; The Humans (Tony Award); Fun Home (Tony nomination); The Last Ship, In the Next Room (Tony nomination), Xanadu. Off-Broadway: Hamlet, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, 10 out of 12.
Broadway: The Real Thing, Violet, The Realistic Joneses. Off-Broadway: Signature, Playwrights Horizons, Public, Roundabout, Elevator Repair Service, NYTW, TFANA, many others. Other NYC: Encores! Off-Center (NYCC), BAM, Juilliard Opera. Regional: A.R.T., Guthrie, Center Theater Group, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Long Wharf, Huntington, Berkeley Rep, many others. Obie Award for Sustained Excellence.
Award winning sound and video designer for live performance, including theater, musicals, opera and dance. Based in NYC and working on and off-Broadway, downtown, at regional theaters, and in Europe. Director collaborators have included Scott Elliot, Anne Kauffman, Rachel Chavkin, Pam MacKinnon, Will Davis, Steve Cosson, Ken Rus Schmoll, Kate Whoriskey, Davis Mccallum, Eric Ting, Bill Rauch, Wendy Goldberg, Evan Yionoulis, Doug Fitch, and Robert Woodruff. Nominated for a Tony Award for her sound design for Mary Jane at MTC. Other honors include two Lortels for Outstanding Sound Design, a Connecticut Critics Circle Award, and multiple Hewes nominations.
Photos of (1) Tracee Chimo, Deirdre O'Connell, Heidi Schreck, Reed Birney, and Peter Friedman; (2) Deirdre O'Connell, Heidi Schreck, Tracee Chimo, and Reed Birney; (3) Reed Birney and Heidi Schreck; and (4) Deirdre O'Connell, Tracee Chimo, and Peter Friedman by Joan Marcus.
Circle Mirror Transformation is the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word. I know this because I have been accosted by more than one bright-eyed babbler. Although I was traveling just as it opened, friends and colleagues — and in one case, a theater-obsessed maitre d’ — urged me to make my way to the small Peter Jay Sharp Theater, right this minute, to bask in the enchantment. Bask I did recently, and emerged with the same giddy sense of discovery, the same almost proprietary need to ensure that this small, quirky, immensely lovable new play does not go unnoticed by theatergoers in perennial search of fresh voices and boundary-bending experiments.
