In Annie Baker’s play “Body Awareness,” performed at Shanley Pavilion on Jan. 27, Frank Bonitatibus (Michael Hendon) is a pompous photographer who visits the home of Joyce and Phyllis, who has hired him to perform at the university where she teaches. Hendon’s performance stood out to me because he elevated Frank from mere villain to a layered character through body language, the tone and volume of his voice and subtle movements. On the surface, Frank is a really obnoxious character: he interrupts when other people are talking, pretends to know things he doesn’t and plays terrible recorder music. However, Hendon gave him complexity and his body language was one of the biggest contributors of that. For example, in one scene, when Frank is talking to the family during dinner, the actor leaned back in his seat, with his arm imperiously slung over the rail of the chair. His dominating sitting position conveyed the sense that he was eager to dominate in any conversation or relationship. Yet in another scene, Frank demonstrated his softer side while talking to Joyce’s son Jared. In this instance,…show more content… There was a scene when Frank was being presumptuous and judgmental, by asking Jared in a booming, shocked voice, “You’ve never had a girlfriend??” However, in another moment, as Frank was about to photograph Joyce for a nude shoot and she started hesitating, he talked to her in a quiet way. In that scene, I felt that he was trying to be comforting and not cross lines, by speaking in a softer tone. In other scenes, Hendon was able to vary his tone and volume in just one sentence. For example, when Frank bragged about himself, he started start the phrase at a louder and slower decibel to indicate that what he was saying was mighty important (e.g. “Well, in my opinion …”), but by the end, his voice got lower and faded off, as if he became lost in thought and couldn’t even be bothered to finish the
