Circle Mirror Transformation plays at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42nd St., through Sun 11/15. by Annie Baker Directed by Mony Carpenter Produced by Heather Schultz Stage Manager Kathy Hyland. orchestrated with a subtlety and unfailing naturalness that make the plays small revelations disarming and unexpected. Lighting Designer Weili Shi creates considerable visual drama with spots, floods, and frame illumination for the large mirrors in the set to compensate for the spare staging. The delivery acts as a window into the perceptions of how the speaker feels about the subject of the monologue, sometimes to the surprise of the latter. It just goes about teaching this life lesson in a very interesting way. The play opened Off-Broadway in 2009 and received the Obie Award for Best New American Play. Apr. It was a student-run production in the Law Auditorium, but despite the lack of a perfect set, great tech or flawless performances, the script made it a compelling show. Marty instructs her students to act as baseball gloves in one class and beds in another. The versatile Reed Birney (whose raw performance inBlastedat Soho Rep was one of last seasons best) is excellent here as the wounded Schultz, who quickly falls in love with Theresa and is just as quickly and violently devastated when their brief affair doesnt last. OConnell, as Marty, does an excellent job creating the pseudo-sincere care and attention of the not very talented acting teacher. This is my favorite kind of play, in that it has so many elements that intrigue me and attract me to theatre -naturalism, unexpected humour, characters spilling innermost thoughts and fears when they don't even realize they're doing it, a meta -commentary (in this case, about theatre itself and about the 'roles' we play and how 'all the world's a stage") and one character just wondering what the hell is going on. one and more. Required fields are marked *. [CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION] is about real people exploring their lives through tiny leaps of faith and creativity. BackStage. You can try to imagine it, but it is not the same as being in the audience and seeing this all play out before you. Im not a huge fan of dialogue-reliant shows but something about the way Baker organized it by labeling the weeks made it so entertaining and interesting. . 1 Connection. Having now both read and seen this show, I really think that while the device of acting exercises to explore who the characters are is a really interesting one, the show is just too long. Is there healing to be had in this room? One of the students, James (Tad Paulsen) is married to teacher (Nina Swanson), the revelation of which sets the tone for what is to be a play that is funny on the surface but extremely uncomfortable underneath. Although I thought that it was a wonderful piece to read about the quotidian doldrums of life, specifically for those who find themselves in economically precarious situations like working at a movie theater to make ends meet, it was not one of my favorite plays necessarily. I would recommend it, I just this the flick is a bigger achievement personally, so maybe read that one first. Annie Baker's play, Circle Mirror Transformation, is the best piece of contemporary drama that I have read since discovering the works of Sarah Ruhl in college. Her quiet masterpiece Circle Mirror Transformation won the 2010 Obie Award for Best New Play, and was voted one of the top 10 plays of 2009 by the New York Times, Time Out, and The New Yorker. And then: a collective breath. Circle Mirror Transformation is an exercise in quietude: painfully long pauses, nervous breathing, deepest secrets written down on scraps of paper.