Story/Teller Arts: Annie Baker on Infinite Life

Join us for an evening with Annie Baker as she discusses Infinite Life, a funny, tender, and profound meditation on chronic illness, desire, and the human body’s limits. Baker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Flick and acclaimed writer-director of Janet Planet, brings her signature insight, empathy, and subtle humor to a work that examines what it means to inhabit a body that refuses to cooperate.

Infinite Life follows five women at a Northern California clinic, each seeking to heal from cancer, autoimmune disorders, thyroid conditions, and mysterious infections. Over the course of several days, the clinic becomes a purgatorial space where prolonged hunger and suffering warp time, and the women wrestle with pain, hope, and intimacy. Philosophizing, confiding family secrets, and sharing literary recommendations, they navigate the complex intersections of physical fragility and emotional desire in a story both devastating and darkly funny.

Baker will explore her process, the play’s journey from Off-Broadway to the National Theatre in London, and how theater, and storytelling more broadly, can illuminate the invisible, intimate realities of illness, endurance, and human connection.