“I often make something because I don’t know how to describe it otherwise. It’s through making the thing that I can describe, for myself, the feeling or the place or the emotion.”
-Annie Baker, episode 374 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Beloved playwright Annie Baker won the Pulitzer for Drama in 2014 for her play, The Flick. A decade later, she’s releasing her directorial debut, Janet Planet, through A24.
We begin by talking about her striking first feature (7:55): the Western Massachusetts origins of the project (11:00), the mother-daughter love story at its center (13:24), how Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” shaped Baker’s understanding of time (22:55), and why she’s routinely sidestepped the slippery-slope of “confessional” autobiography in her own work (30:30).
On the back-half, we discuss Annie’s early jobs in New York before she turned to the page and the classroom (40:00), the issues of class that continue to plague contemporary theater (45:00), a formative Rainer Maria Rilke poem as read by Sam (55:50), and whether she believes art “matters” in 2024 (1:00:18)
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.
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Show-notes:
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- Watch Annie’s film directorial debut Janet Planet in select theaters, expanding in wide release June 28th.
- Find her Pulitzer-winning play The Flick and more from Concord Theatricals.
- For more talks, hear our conversations with Jeff Daniels, Eddie Redmayne, Michelle Williams, Oscar Isaac, Holland Taylor, Michael Shannon, and Tracy Letts.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
All works discussed can be found at Books Are Magic:
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- “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann
- “Duino Elegies” by Rainer Maria Rilke
- “Pnin” by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Plays of Annie Baker
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Additional resources referenced:
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- Elaine Stritch singing “The Ladies Who Lunch” in Original Cast Album: Company
- Annie’s recent talk with The New Yorker
- Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks
- In conversation with Terrence McNally
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Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi. Reference photograph by Ella Pennington.
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