Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play examines storytelling, from the vantage point a post-apocalyptic setting.
The first act is set soon after a disaster that ended civilization–a frightened band of survivors try to distract themselves by remembering and retelling a Simpson’s episode. The second act occurs 7 years later, with the same group now attempting to put on a dramatic performance of that Simpson’s episode, complete with costume, props, and commercials. They struggle to evoke the carefree times that existed before the downfall of civilization. By the third act, 75 years later, story has transformed into myth, and we see a passion play recounting the struggles and hardships that people endured in a catastrophe that killed 99% of the population.
The play is written by Anne Washburn who wrote Communist Dracula Pageant, and who discusses her new play, Antlia Pneumatica (currently running at Playwrights Horizon in New York), in a recent New Yorker article.
You can get a sense of Mr. Burns from the this video from the NYC premiere:
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