In her dystopian thought experiment, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, dramatist Anne Washburn explores “what would happen to a pop culture narrative pushed past the fall of civilization.” Indeed, after some serious fires and the gradual interruption of nuclear plants’ regular operations, the lack of electricity has shifted priorities for everyone.
But what are the priorities for the production team staging the play at the Nevada Conservatory Theatre? After attending a run-through of the show, I interviewed director Kirsten Brandt, also the current chair of the Theatre Department.
Stebos: You came to UNLV last year with two decades of experience as stage director and playwright in both professional and educational settings. This is the first production you direct for the Nevada Conservatory Theatre with a cast of graduate and undergraduate students. Are you excited? Was the casting process difficult, considering some characters have to somewhat resemble the beloved Simpson family members?
Brandt: I am thrilled to be directing here. Over the last year, I have watched the tremendous growth of the MFA acting cohort as well as the undergraduate students. What excites me is not only that I’m working with our student actors but with our students in design and technology as well.
When I ran Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego, I called my ensemble “fearless cliff divers” – they were so ready to take on challenges and hone their craft. Our students embody that same spirit; they are game to try anything.
In fact, I was incredibly surprised at how easy the show was to cast. The Act I and II actors fell into place very quickly in my mind. The trick was casting the Chorus in Act III, mainly because they not only have to sing, act, and move, but they need to be the “band” as well. So, I was looking for quadruple threats.
Stebos: In her advice to the director, playwright and lyricist Anne Washburn suggests that “this beast of a play … will task you, and your cast and design team, but I hope it will be as much fun and reward as it is struggle.” Can you talk about what were the most difficult and, conversely, the most fun aspects of directing Mr. Burns?
Brandt: This play is a beast, for sure. Washburn splits the play into three acts. Each is continuous action with no scene breaks, the actors are on stage the whole time, and the playwright has an ability to turn from tragic to comic on a dime. It’s an endurance test, a marathon. However, it is so much fun.
Overall, we’ve looked at the show as reflecting the evolution of theatre. Act I is storytelling around a fire, Act II is about traveling theatrical troupes, and Act III is grand, elaborate spectacle with heart.
Act II, which takes place 7 years after Act I, shows how our merry crew has developed into a theatre company and we get to play with multiple styles of performance – commercials, cartoons, and pop hits.
Act III — 75 years after the events of Act II — is a director’s dream. Essentially, the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons has been turned into a musical theatre/ritual/opera hybrid. Washburn gives us a few parameters, but really it is up to us (design team and cast) to bring it to life. The Act III story is also the story of the survivors of Act I, only now personified through Simpsons characters. It’s a coming together of all the elements: acting, singing, music, and design.
Stebos: Just like the Simpsons’ episodes rehearsed by these characters, which already liberally adapted and humorously reshaped a wealth of cultural references, the play draws from several intertextual references: The Simpsons themselves, cinema, operetta, even contemporary news (O.J. Simpson, for example). Did you watch the original works with the actors for their preparation? And how did you approach these references to make them clear, or clearer, for the audience?
Brandt: I was a huge fan of The Simpsons for years. A few of us rewatched the “Cape Feare” episode but already in Act I, when the group is recalling the episode, they’re getting some of the details wrong. Washburn really takes care of the audience as you don’t need to know anything about The Simpsons to enjoy the show. She skillfully gives you the context of the reference, so that when (or if) it repeats later, you know why.
The show is packed with other references (and references on top of references) from the thriller movie Night of the Hunter to Britney Spears’s song Toxic — two references I didn’t know when I started directing the play. To help our cast, during rehearsal, my assistant director, Martin Hackett, and I put together an actor spreadsheet with all the information. And Kate Critchfield – who plays Colleen/Lisa and is also our outreach coordinator – created a "Know Before You Go (or Read After You See)" study guide for our audiences if they want to dive deeper.
Stebos: The play imagines a time when people are forced to live without electricity and adapt their activities based on that limitation. In this post-electric future deprived of the competition from movies or the internet, theatre regains an enormous importance and for these characters even becomes an essential means of surviving. How did you work with the actors to convey this sense of urgency? Did you talk about other similarly dystopian works?
Brandt: Theatre is life! Live performance is about community, it brings us together. It makes sense that storytelling, theatre, and performance are what holds the fabric of society together. People need story, it is like the air we breathe. During COVID, entertainment — mostly what we could consume digitally like TV, film, and videos — is what got us through the lock-downs.
As a group, we talked a lot about other dystopian futures that are in the mainstream right now, like the Walking Dead. I’m a huge fan of the show but have often thought: Where is the theatre troupe?! They would have some joy if they had art.
For instance, Station Eleven, a novel by Emily St. John Mandel, came out in 2014, two years after the debut of Mr. Burns at the Wolly Mammoth Theatre in D.C., and like Mr. Burns focuses on a theatre troupe (mostly doing Shakespeare) touring after the collapse of civilization due to a pandemic.
Stebos: One of the difficulties inherent in this play is its timespan, from shortly after a nuclear disaster in the near future, to seven years later, and then seventy-five years after that. During this time, The Simpsons shift from a fun, pop culture TV reference to archetypal characters. How did you approach this passage of time, cultural reappropriation, and/or its effects?
Brandt: We talked a lot about what stays in the mainstream, how stories get handed down. If you think about it, a lot of phrases in our daily vernacular were actually created by Shakespeare. We look at the ancient Greek myths and you can see, for example, the story of Persephone and Hades has become the Web comics Lore Olympus and Hadestown. The new Netflix show KAOS is another riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. The interesting thing about The Simpsons is that it was already borrowing from pop culture, recent and classic. We are constantly quoting pop culture references in our daily life. And how those references evolve can be extraordinary. People use phrases like “I’m going to make them an offer they can’t refuse” or “it’s going to be a bumpy night” or “they’re here” or “you can’t handle the truth” without knowing the full original source material and yet understanding the context in which the phrase is used.
Stebos: Although personal relationships are hinted at, Washburn’s focus seems to land much more on group dynamics, around a campfire, in rehearsal, or during a show. How did you work with the actors, either delving more than the playwright into the psychology of individual characters or exploring their relation to their now smaller social circle?
Brandt: Washburn gives you very little backstory on any of the characters. All you know about them is maybe where they came from and only in one instance a former occupation. So, the actors really had to develop their unique character based on how they responded to group dynamics and “who” they become in this new world. We asked a lot of “why” questions and it was fun making the decisions that fit best in the world of the play. It becomes really clear who is in league with whom in Act II and subtle terms of endearment like “babe” allow us to presume relationships.
Stebos: At some point, the characters mention The Simpsons’ commercials, played by the Itchy and Scratchy characters, simultaneously very violent and hilarious as perceived by Bart and Lisa Simpson. This type of abrupt shift also occurs in this play, when apparently relaxed situations can swiftly devolve into very dramatic situations. How did you handle these sudden mood breaks?
Brandt: The Itchy and Scratchy cartoons the Simpson kids watch are incredibly violent and a parody of cat and mouse classics like Tom and Jerry. For our troupe, they develop longer “commercials” that resemble a more realistic world. The “Commercials” are about a longing for the past, when people watched TV, went to work, and got to dine out. They are about the food and beverages people remember but don’t have anymore, about the simple luxuries – like a warm bubble bath.
Stebos: Another darker aspect of the play are the lists each character keeps of their relatives, friends, or acquaintances they once knew, without now being sure if they still live or their current whereabouts. The playwright suggests a certain detachment on the actors’ part, but the notebooks they use signal a substantial crumbling of social networks, something many of us would consider very tragic indeed. How did this aspect of the play impact your work with the performers and staging?
Brandt: In the play, each character has a book of all the people they meet. When a newcomer arrives, everyone gets to ask about ten people, to see if the newcomer has them in their book. This was probably the hardest scene for us to work on. Every name has meaning to the characters and when the names are brought up there is always a hope that they will get an answer. When we meet our group – it is a few months into the disaster – each character is processing in their own way. How they ask about their names says a lot about how they are dealing with the horror, dread, and fear, of what is happening around them.
Stebos: Despite these gloomy moments, the play’s third act offers a glimpse of positive news, when access to electricity is somehow regained through physical labor and theatre can afford means it didn’t have in the wake of the disaster. What do you believe is the main theme or message of this play?
Brandt: It’s interesting that Washburn specifies which actor (don’t want to give a spoiler) is laboring to creating electricity. A lot can be read into that choice – is the play saying it is that actor or the character the actor is playing? It all gets very metatheatrical. However, the hope of innovation is beautiful. There is a joy of light at the end of the darkness.
Stebos: For such complex play you had input from several collaborators for movement, set, lights, music, and costumes. Can you say something about the highlights of these collaborations?
Brandt: From the start, this show is about the design, from what do you take from the TV show The Simpsons itself to how you imagine a future. We talked a lot about recycled materials and what would remain seven to seventy-five years from now without electricity. Would people be knitting again? How much plastic would be around? What items would be salvaged? Dana Moran Williams has created a playgroup of a set that gradually expands throughout the show. JD Anderson’s costumes, particularly in Act III, are amazing as we imagine how The Simpsons will be represented in a more mythic way and with the materials they can find. Paige Borak, our lighting designer, had the hardest task – making it look like there is no real electricity! The four of us really had to come together and collaborate on how it would all blend together.
Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions in detail, Kirsten! Go see this scintillating play!
