About the Play:

John has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.

John is a full-length drama by Annie Baker. One cold November night in an eerie Pennsylvanian B'n'B, a cheerful host houses a young couple whose relationship is disintegrating while the house and its thousands of inanimate objects look on. John is a sharp and atmospheric play by Annie Baker that explores loneliness, communication, and the question of whether objects do, indeed, have souls.

John is about a young couple from Brooklyn, Elias Schrieber-Hoffman and Jenny Chung, who come to stay at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, looking to visit the historical sites of the famous battlefield. Mertis, the B&B's proprietor, welcomes them to her overwhelmingly cozy home filled with tchotchkes, dolls, stuffed animals and a player piano. Mertis cares for her guests, her sickly (unseen) husband, and her dear, blind friend Genevieve with consummate grace, and though she has experienced her own share of suffering, her perspective on life is quite congenial. We learn that her B&B is the site of a former Civil War hospital, and seems to be full of strange and possibly supernatural occurrences. Mertis also provides a real contrast to the young couple, who we learn may be taking this trip to repair a rift in their fractured relationship.

John premiered in 2015 at the Signature Theatre off-Broadway in New York City and was nominated for the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. Time Magazine ranked it on its list of Top Ten Plays and Musicals for 2015. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Annie Baker's John is so good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light." — The New Yorker

"…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." — The New York Times

"Baker is trying to extend to characters in extremis the intense realism – not stage realism but real realism – usually denied them in plays." — Vulture

"When it comes to playwriting, [Baker] is astonishingly clear-eyed. In John ... one character is blind and another wears glasses with a very strong prescription, but they both benefit from Baker's excellent vision." — The Guardian

"Baker knows exactly what she's doing – she gives us just enough to open up possibilities. What a thrill." — New York Post

"Baker does not merely tell a scary story. She shows them, piling up like ghosts of amputated limbs from the war wounded, and makes them riveting, unpredictable, altogether human theater." — Newsday

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.