February 20–24
What's left to humanity in the wasteland of an apocalyptic future? What can't be wiped out by nuclear meltdown and epidemic disease?
In Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, it's our shared stories that hold the characters together in a dystopian nightmare scenario, in particular, recalled episodes of The Simpsons.
Director and chair of Muhlenberg College's theater department, Beth Schachter chose this play not only because of an increasing sense of instability in the world, but also because students are eager to tackle the play's complexity. “Each act has its own theatrical aesthetic and relation to the audience,” she says. And just like The Simpsons, Mr. Burns offers both high and low comedy, from elegant wit to zany slapstick.
In the first act, a group of survivors gather soon after a series of catastrophes and entertain one another recalling an episode of The Simpsons. As the acts progress, years and generations pass and we see how the story survives as a traveling troupe's livelihood and, much later, a ritual musical performance of what has become iconography.
Adding in re-creations of commercials, the sustenance of the television experience conjures nostalgic images and songs “to defend against the reality of how desperate things are,” says Schachter. “It's an act in which consumer culture and capitalism shift to become a shared memory site.”
The set and costume designers have drawn on the layered recycling of pop culture seen in the cobbled-together fashion of festivals like Burning Man and Wasteland to create a world of reimagined remnants. If we had to, how would we resurrect ourselves? Without our media to tell us who we are, how would the community experience of theater be important to us?
Food for thought as you take in Mr. Burns at Muhlenberg this month.
Children: $8; Adults: $15 | 2 & 8 p.m. | The Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavilion | 2400 Chew St., Allentown | 484.664.3333 | muhlenberg.edu
