'Mr. Burns' And Friends, Surviving Long Past The End Times
If the world as we know it comes to an end, will art survive? And if it does, what kinds of stories will be told after the apocalypse? The answer might surprise you.
The lights come up on a group of people around a campfire in the woods, trying to recall all the details of the hilarious Simpsons episode "Cape Feare," a parody of the Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro movies, in which Bart Simpson is stalked by the evil but incompetent Sideshow Bob.
Then one of the group hears a sound in the woods, and all of a sudden guns are drawn. Turns out something bad has happened. Something very, very bad: The electrical grid is down, nuclear plants are imploding, most of the population of the United States has been wiped out.
"I wanted to take a pop-culture narrative and push it past the apocalypse and see what happened," says Anne Washburn. She's the author of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, an audacious three-act drama that takes place in three different eras: right after the apocalypse, seven years after that, and 75 years farther down the road. The show had its world premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, a notable new-play incubator, and runs at New York's Playwrights Horizons through Oct. 6.
In each of its three acts, Washburn's survivors recount that Simpsons episode, which has become a symbol of all that has been lost, and what hope may be found. And with each retelling, the story changes.
"I was thinking, 'What happens to the story? What's the game of Telephone? What changes, and why does it change?,'" Washburn says. "That was the question. What version led to what version? And who are the people who change a version?"
Enlarge image i