http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/the-funny-empathetic-genius-of-annie-baker

That beautiful, pained, exquisitely alive feeling you get during the best moments of theatre—that life is too wonderful to be believed, and too cruel in its ephemerality—is with you right from the start.

Baker explores the idea that empathy can be a mixed bag. When Genevieve went crazy, she “felt a deep but also disturbing connection with the soul of every person and every object that had ever existed. Not just the souls of departed conquistadors but also the soul of a picture frame, a toy trumpet.” When she went blind, that went away. It was just her. “No more trying to get in anyone else’s head.” No more worrying about what anyone thinks of her—now it was just her and her thoughts.

Baker’s style, which famously includes pauses and awkward silences and realistically inarticulate bumbling, is very much like this description of 35-mm. film. It captures the light and shadow of everyday life, the nuance of human conversation. She allows them a generous amount of time. Sometimes people leave at intermission; a woman I overheard on a cell phone in the lobby at “John” said, “You could say it’s slow going.” I get mad when people complain about the length of Baker’s plays, or even joke about it, as they loved to do with “Gatz,” Elevator Repair Service’s seven-hour “Great Gatsby” masterpiece. Three hours is insultingly long for a bad play or an indulgent play—ninety minutes can be too long—but three hours for a fantastic play not only isn’t onerous, it’s a gift. When an artist’s work is sensitive, disciplined, and well-structured, and when it listens to its subjects, portrays them thoughtfully, and treats their lives with respect, that generosity of time becomes part of the empathy, and we become part of the empathy, too. We’re paying them the respect of attention. The pacing is essential to the insight and to the rhythm of the humor.

You teach playwriting at Hunter College. What do you try to drive home to your students? The main thing I want them to take away, and I think it frustrates them sometimes, is that there isn’t one real right way to write a play, and that it’s their job to reinvent the art form every time they write a play, and that their tastes mean something, and they shouldn’t be writing from a place of anxiety. That when you write from a place of anxiety and fear and careerism, you write usually stupid stuff. Have you done that? Yeah. Sitting down and being like, “I’m gonna write a hit!” That’s so bad. I make them read this book by Lawrence Weschler about Robert Irwin, the artist. It’s my textbook, and it’s called Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. Irwin has this quote, something like, When I turned 35, I stopped being motivated by ambition and became purely motivated by curiosity. And that is what I try to teach them.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/annie-baker-on-memoir-reality-tv-and-hollywood.html