Is this the post-apocalyptic future? How many Simpsons characters can you ID? |
That supposition forms the basis for Anne Washburn's superb creation Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play now being performed brilliantly at the Wooly Mammoth Theater Company. The play is divided intro 3 acts. Act I takes place shortly after the disaster. Act II occurs 7 years later and Act III takes place 75 years into the future.
The one-of-a-kind play, which contains elements of science fiction, satire, pathos, humor, hurrahs to pop culture, and witty, original musical numbers and dances, obviously owes a thematic debt to the literary genre of post-apocalyptic fiction. Washburn acknowledges Stephen King's epic The Stand (which is one of my all-time favorite novels and is on sale at the theater) as an inspiration. But the mingling of those elements with the doings of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Sideshow Bob, Mr. Burns and other members of The Simpsons casts pushes the play into new thought-provoking and extremely entertaining territory.
In her essential narrative from the playbill, production dramaturg Miriam Weisfeld writes: "In Mr. Burns, the comfort that unites strangers and keeps despair at bay is simply a TV cartoon: a funny story they can recall together and - even better - re-enact. In her play, Anne Washburn proposes that performance plays a vital role in human survival. It becomes an escape from fear, a valuable commodity, and finally an elegy for a lost way of life."
Director Washburn says the play is a vehicle to explore the ways that memory - and necessity - change narratives. "I was interested in what stories would persist after the loss of a civilization, and the different reasons they would be retained, and I was interested in storytelling: in what parts of a narrative are essential, and what the role of storytelling would be in a post-industrial society. In Mr. Burns, I tried to understand what values would be relevant for a post-civilization audience who had lost and endured so much"
Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
Are these post-apocalyptic DCers? |
No comments:
Post a Comment