Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

Is this the post-apocalyptic future? How many Simpsons characters can you ID?

Imagine there was a severe catastrophe. The power grid across America goes down and without power, water, and emergency services, fires rage out of control and nuclear reactors overheat, releasing wind-blown radioactive materials across the land. The U.S. population is decimated and a small band of frightened survivors tries to hold on to its humanity by remembering and replaying bits of popular culture, in particular episodes of The Simpsons TV show.

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"

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Are these post-apocalyptic DCers?

As additional attractions for the play, a blackboard where you could trace and add other cultural references found in The Simpsons was placed in the lobby. Upstairs, an exhibition of apocalyptic art work from 3 DC-area artists (Gregg Deal, Dafna Steinberg, and Kelly Towles) was displayed. The commissioned Mr. Burns artwork examined the question - What does the future of the District hold if a majority of the population is annihilated tomorrow?