The central conflict of “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” lies in passing on elements of culture to our future generations. The plot speculates on stories being told and transformed over the years. Music, entertainment shows, and commercials – as markers of our modern culture – grow into legends of the past as they all get mixed up in the production’s final scene. As time goes by, people keep holding on to the shadows of their past lives by collecting memories and turning them into entertainment. The play raises the question of what stories will be remembered in the future and whether they have any chance of staying unchanged.
The actors’ use of “virtuosity” is the key to why the production has enjoyed such positive acceptance. The players devote their skills to making a distinction between picturing the real characters and the roles being played out. The production itself is a theater about theater, a meta-play. While Gibson, Jenny, and others put on a show, they use voices and movements to underline the idea that the action itself is unrealistic, happening only on stage. However, when the scenes portray the real lives of the characters, these actors seem very natural and familiar. When they try to remember an episode of The Simpsons in the opening scene, they sound like a group of similarly aged people talking in a living room about something they all have experienced. This group of apocalypses survivors trying to recall the four notes from the Simpsons’ episode in the first act is very believable. All this is happening in a dark room with weak light, and shadows surrounding the actors. This post-apocalyptic world, lacking electricity and other benefits of civilization, constantly reminds us that “danger still lurks at every corner” (Gilbert, p. 1). The actors’ body language effectively portrays the fear and uncertainty they feel in this new reality.
The final scene pictures an episode from The Simpsons being turned into a full musical show. Actors are wearing grotesque masks as if to demonstrate the lack of reality. Returning to the central conflict, it finally receives a resolution in the form of a story transformation. Various music hits accompany the scene, mixing Britney Spears with Eminem. This mash-up adds to the concept of a situation in which show lines are a kind of treasure, even when put together and not truly corresponding with an original plot. Mr. Burns swings his sword, making circles around Bart Simpson, who is singing with a high-pitched voice. This new version of the episode is nothing like the original. Still, the main characters of “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” view it as a precious material, and seek to hold on to the ownership rights.
The University of Illinois Department of Theater has made a well-thought-out choice by producing “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play”. This play is all about the theater industry and its future, from a particular perspective. It gives students a chance to impersonate real people and actors, regarding one production. This is a very useful resource for depicting the difference between natural and staged behavior and portraying it correctly to the audience. This production also stresses the value of cultural information and ownership, reminding students that their work will be closely related to intellectual property regulations. Finally, the production is part musical, so it allows training vocal skills.
I believe this play raises the question of how comforting entertainment can be in times of fear and an unclear future. Some critics compare the production to “The Decameron” since the main characters sit around “like the sequestered Florentines” (Brantley, p. 1) telling each other popular stories of their time. Cultural inheritance is presented as having a real value as an actual fight arises over it. Characters get killed as a result of a conflict of interests among several theater owners. The play provides an opinion that during times of hardship people try to hold on to what they used to know and experience in their day-to-day life. Thus, pop culture acquires a cost, which may have to pay to feel safer in this post-electric era. Another issue is how stories fit into stories. The original Simpsons episode transformed into a musical several decades later presents the idea of various cultural items having different values to the audience. The final scene paired with hip-hop declares that people tend to combine their preferences and may be receptive to believing an entirely new version of their past – a new product – as a result.
I have liked the production very much. I like musicals, to begin with, and this one was a pleasure to watch. Moreover, while most other musicals are often quite melodramatic, this one has many facets of a comedy. Actors singing tunes from The Simpsons are funny and believable. However, I feel that this story is also about the community and its relations. It was interesting to take a look at characters’ attempts to “sustain the values of human identity in the face of trauma” (Grossman, p. 171). The play left me feeling that we rarely think of how pop culture affects us and how our lives would be different without it.
Works Cited
- Brantley, Ben. “Stand Up, Survivors; Homer Is With You.” The New York Times, 2013.
- Gilbert, Sophie. “Theater Review: “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” at Woolly Mammoth.” Washingtonian, 2012: 1.
- Grossman, Julie. Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny: Adaptation and ElasTEXTity, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. Print.