About the Play:

Circle Mirror Transformation is a full-length comedic drama by Annie Baker. Breathe in. Breathe out. Start again. Circle Mirror Transformation offers a glimpse into how four strangers and their teacher learn more about themselves than they do about acting during a seemingly innocent six-week adult Creative Drama class filled with games, struggles and creativity.

Circle Mirror Transformation is centered on drama classes at a community centre in Vermont. When four lost New Englanders who enroll in Marty's six-week-long community-center drama class in the fictional college town of Shirley, Vermont begin to experiment with harmless games, hearts are quietly torn apart, and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. Circle Mirror Transformation is a beautifully-crafted diorama of a comedy that shows us, with terrific detail and clarity, the hilarious sadness of a motley quintet.

Circle Mirror Transformation premiered in 2009 at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway in New York City. Listed among the top ten plays of 2009 by The New Yorker, The New York Times and Time Out NY, this quirky “indie charmer” (Los Angeles Times) won the 2010 Obie Award for Best New American Play and received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play. It premiered in the UK in 2013 as part of the Royal Court's Theatre Local strand of site specific productions across London. The play is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Annie Baker's play is an absolute feast. 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. The play traces the lives of a handful of small-town Vermont residents who gather each week for an acting class taught at the local community center. By the play's end we seem to see to the very bottom of these souls, and feel how the artificial intimacy of the acting class has shaped their lives in substantial ways." — The New York Times

"…orchestrated with a subtlety and unfailing naturalness that make the play's small revelations disarming and unexpected. The characterizations display a miniaturist attention to detail that goes down to the bone…Baker is never blind to their weaknesses and faults, yet regards them all with a warm, empathetic eye." — Variety

"Smartly, sneakily, Baker gives us the rare theatercentric play that's not self-obsessed. [Circle Mirror Transformation] is about real people exploring their lives through tiny leaps of faith and creativity." — BackStage

"Baker develops her characters slowly through their interactions each week in class, which is the only place we see them. Naturally, their real, offstage lives gradually infiltrate the classroom, revealing insights and transformations both humorous and heartbreaking." — Associated Press

"Reverberates with seduction and sorrow…the play's final scene is devastatingly gentle." — Village Voice

About the Playwright:

Annie Baker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. Her work has been produced at more than a hundred theaters in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries. Recent honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Steinberg Playwright Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. She is a resident playwright at Signature Theatre.