Performance - Body Awareness

By Annie Baker

It's "Body Awareness Week" on a small Vermont college campus and feminist professor Phyllis and her partner, Joyce, are hosting a male guest artist who specializes in female nude photographs. The couple is already struggling as they try to counsel Joyce's 21-year old son, Jared, an amateur lexicographer with a fondness for the OED and phone sex lines whom they believe suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. When their guest arrives, both his presence and his chosen subject matter instigate a new level of discomfort. Hailed "An engaging new comedy by a young playwright with a probing, understated voice," (The New York Times) Obie Award-winning playwright Annie Baker's Body Awareness examines the mutability of relationships and how fragile people become when they are confronted with the unexpected.

Body Awareness will be produced as the fully-staged anchor production in The Global Age Project (GAP), an Aurora Theatre Company initiative that encourages playwrights and directors to explore life in the 21st century and beyond. In addition, several new plays dealing with global age concerns will be chosen from an international pool of playwrights and presented in a series of developmental readings during the run of Body Awareness.