Flick

2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

In a run-down movie theater in central Massachusetts, the tiny battles and not-so-tiny heartbreaks of three underpaid employees play out in the empty aisles, becoming more gripping than the lackluster, second-run movies on screen. With keen insight and a finely tuned comic eye, The Flick is a hilarious and heart-rending cry for authenticity in a fast-changing world. This comedy, by one of the United States' most-produced and highly regarded young playwrights, premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in winter of 2013, directed by Sam Gold.

"Annie Baker is one of the best young playwrights working today." Paris Review

"Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theatre today....There is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation." The New York Times

"Baker's heartbreaking works of staggering focus have actually rescued realism from the aesthetic scrap heap." Time Out New York

An Obie Award-winning playwrights passionate ode to film and the theater that happens in between.

Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
-Funny, heartbreaking, sly and unblinking...The Flick may be the best argument anyone has yet made for the continued necessity and profound uniqueness of theater.- --Jesse Green, New York
-Hilarious and ineffably touching...Ms. Baker's peerless aptitude for exploring how people grope their way toward a sense of equanimity, even as they learn to accept disappointment, is among the things that make her such a gifted writer...This lovingly observed play will sink deep into your consciousness.- --Charles Isherwood, New York Times
-This hypnotic, heartbreaking micro-epic about movies and moving on is irreducibly theatrical.- --David Cote, TimeOut New York
In a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
ANNIE BAKER'S works include The Aliens (Obie Award), Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award), Nocturama, and an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Her work has been produced at more than a hundred theaters in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries. Recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Steinberg Playwright Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. She is a resident playwright at Signature Theatre.

Annie Baker's works include The Aliens (Obie Award), Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award), Nocturama, and a fresh, Off-Broadway-hit adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Recent honors include a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, two Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nominations, a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, and commissions from Center Theater Group and Playwrights Horizons.