It's 'Body Awareness' week on a Vermont college campus and Phyllis, the organizer, and her partner, Joyce, are hosting one of the guest artists in their home, Frank, a painter famous for his female nude portraits.

Both his presence in the home and his chosen subject instigate tension from the start. Phyllis is furious at his depictions, but Joyce is actually rather intrigued by the whole thing, even going so far as to contemplate posing for him.

As Joyce and Phyllis bicker, Joyce's adult son, who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome, struggles to express himself physically with heartbreaking results.

The deepest and richest of the three plays by Annie Baker that make up the Shirley, VT Plays Festival...Editor's Pick!

The Boston Globe

An engaging new comedy by a young playwright with a probing, understated voice...Its quiet rewards steal up on you.

The New York Times

Sexuality's endless capacity to make us miserable is the keynote of Annie Baker's gentle satire, which takes just four actors and 90 minutes to spin an astonishingly complex web of emotions and ideas...Body Awareness is a smart, modest work about ordinary, flawed people, grasping for connection, but none of it feels small, thanks to Baker's sharp ear for the deeply painful—and funny—longings squirming under her characters' dialogue. What a beautiful start to a young playwright's theatrical body of work.

Time Out New York

An impressive and occasionally beautiful meditation on the mysteries of being moved.

The New Yorker

Premiere Production:

Body Awareness was first presented Off Broadway by the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City in May 2008. It was directed by Karen Kohlhaas.