There's been an alien visitation to Shows Your Mama Wouldn't Know About! Guest writer, Ben Firke reviews Annie Baker's The Aliens...
If you don’t know already, Annie Baker has become one of the most exciting young playwrights working in theater today. She has won an Obie, debuted plays at prestigious Off-Broadway theaters such as Playwrights Horizons, and published four of her works as The Vermont Plays, all achievements unusual for a 31-year-old playwright in the 21st Century. Christopher Isherwood, one of the New York Times’ chief theater critics, routinely cites her as one of the preeminent playwrights of her generation. So it’s no surprise that theater companies across the country have begun producing her work, including the Red Orchid Theater in my current home base of Chicago.
The Aliens is one of Baker’s best-known plays. The subject matter is fairly universal: a glimpse into the daily lives of three creative “slacker” types who hang out behind a coffee shop in rural Vermont. While the narrative is far from some sort of East Village, avant-garde, Artaudian mind-fuck, Baker still makes many strong, even radical, creative choices. The Aliens moves along at an almost glacial pace, often punctuated by uncomfortable silences that would make Harold Pinter squirm in his seat if he were alive (her notes in the published version claim that “at least a third––if not half––of this play is silence”). The characters––especially Jasper and KJ, an aspiring novelist and musician, respectively––very rarely express themselves or their intentions in clear, concise dialogue. They ramble and get confused and bullshit both themselves and other. But underneath the pauses, inarticulate picnic-table philosophizing, and occasionally, KJ’s offbeat songs, lies a rich and arresting story of how regular people in small-town America realize themselves. Or, as KJ says near the end, “make it,” whatever “it” may be.
At the start of the play, the 30somethings KJ and Jasper are sitting at a picnic table. Jasper smokes a cigarette; KJ stares into space. Cue the first of many interminable, uncomfortable silences. Then KJ sings, a cappella, a haunting melody incongruously wed with absurd lyrics about time machines and his status as a “triple-dimensional superstar.” It is clear that this is their routine, which is thrown into flux with the appearance of Evan, a shy 17-year-old in his first week of employment at the café. While they greet Evan initially with suspicion (and gently ridicule his timid attempts to ask them to move to the front less he get in trouble with his boss), Jasper and KJ eventually befriend Evan, who spends more and more of his breaks with the pair.
The next two hours are full of meandering discussions of wind farms, Charles Bukowski, former high school teachers, and the jingoism of the Fourth of July. All of these scenes become engrossing to the point of near-hypnosis. Rather than impose some artificial structure or external plot engine on the trio––in the form of a clear-cut villain, a mission or quest, or some sort of ticking-time-bomb “macguffin” hunt ––Baker instead allows the internal struggles of these characters to come out through the innocuous small-talk. The effect is similar to sunrays poking through Venetian blinds: what little light does shine through still illuminates the world for the audience.
The best term to describe the effect, and Annie Baker’s work in general, is “quietly bold.” It’s a big risk to include so many silences and for all her characters to deceive or self-deceive, exemplified by Jasper’s declarations of happiness and relief upon being dumped. However, Baker trusts her audience to know that there’s a difference between purposive ambiguity and accidental vagueness, and between “not talking” and “nothing happening.” I regret I cannot accurately describe what it’s like to see this––you can only see if for yourself, and the play’s text requires three extremely talented actors to make sure “silence” does not equal “slog” (the Red Orchid’s cast was great, by the way). But that’s what makes live theater so important––to see, in the flesh and in real time, the disconnect between what’s being said (or kept silent) and what a character truly wants.
While my analysis to this point focused on the theory and craft behind Baker’s work (feel free to blame my liberal arts college brainwashing; I know I sure do), it’s important to emphasize that this play is REALLY FUNNY. Like, gut-busting, belly-laugh, roll-around-awkwardly-in-your-tiny-theater-seat hilarious. The songs are a highlight, as are the numerous former band names that KJ and Jasper rattle off when describing their two-man freak folk group. Evan deserves a place in the canon of Painfully Shy, Sensitive, and Awkward Teenagers (Comedic Division), right up there with the many iconic roles of Michael Cera and Anthony Michael Hall. And the silences, many of which involved KJ stroking his beard and staring slack-jawed into space, would routinely induce guffaws from the crowd. While The Aliens deals with the more serious aspects of these characters’ lives as well, its acknowledgement that boredom, ennui, and even loss are excellent fodder for comedy as well as tragedy makes the play worth your trouble from an entertainment perspective. The awkward tension between funny and sad also serves to compliment and elucidate the more serious stuff, which I will explain below.
[GIANT SPOILER ALERT AHEAD––SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING.]
The most dramatic example of Baker’s unique storytelling comes about halfway through the second act. By this time, Jasper has been dead for weeks of an accidental heroin overdose, but KJ has neglected to tell Evan (and by extension, the whole audience). Before he can tell Evan the truth, Jasper relates a story about a childhood obsession with repeating the word “ladder.” One night, he says, his mother held his hand when putting him to bed, and told him to say the word as loudly and as long as he wished. Jasper then demonstrates, repeating “ladder” over and over, but soon is reliving the moment, saying only “ladder” for minutes––which, in stage time, feels like an eternity––building to a crescendo. This is self-evidently ridiculous, and the audience began to laugh about 20 seconds in. But after a while, the “ladders” keep coming, and it is clear that there is something seriously troubling the affable, chubby hippie we met in the first act. KJ eventually bursts into tears and stops when he cannot continue anymore. When I read the play about a month before seeing it, I knew this moment was the emotional crux of the show, but on a purely intellectual level. In performance this genuinely strange scene was moving to me and the entire audience, many of whom wept along with KJ. Neither the character nor the playwright explain why KJ told the story or become so consumed by it, nor do they explain what it means. They don’t have to––everyone in the audience just knew and felt what KJ’s confrontation with the word “ladder” was.
[PHEW––SPOILER ALERT OVER. IF YOU’RE STILL HERE, THE CONCLUSION’S BELOW.]
Plays about “everyday life” or “ordinary people” are not new, and Annie Baker is not the first playwright to reveal more about her characters through silence or obfuscating their “true” thoughts. What makes her worthy of her recently bestowed Playwriting National Treasure status is her ability to create nuanced, complex characters that still appeal to everyone. Her portraits are detailed and specific, each character’s dialogue and worldview idiosyncratic and entirely “theirs.” And yet, all three of The Aliens’ characters struggle to be happy, to belong, and to be recognized––experiences known to, well, pretty much everyone. While Baker is fearless in her inclusion of unusual, experimental, starkly theatrical moments in a mostly “realist” work (seriously, SO MANY “ladders”), this comes from her disciplined commitment to placing character at the foreground of everything. Her title may invoke extraterrestrials, but Annie Baker is such a special discovery for American theater because she creates and presents characters fictional characters that are, for two hours, real humans.
