Simpsons Writer Attends Mr. Burns, Anne and Steve do too.

Hi folks, it's me Steve Cosson Artistic Director of Civilians. I will confess I am woefully under-prepared for the apocalypse zombie or otherwise. But I did just direct a play about it.  

Anne Washburn (author of said play with music by Michael Freidman) and I had the great pleasure of catching the closing weekend of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play at Woolly Mammoth theater in DC. The play is Anne’s imaginings of what would happen to our culture after some cataclysmic event wipes out most of the global population and all the civilization that goes with it.  The Civilians commissioned the play, and Anne started her work by gathering up some of our Associate Actors and having them attempt to reconstruct a Simpson’s episode from memory.  Somehow fittingly, we did all this deep in the bowels of Wall Street in an abandoned bank vault that was somehow given over as non-profit art space. Thanks Wall Street for your generous support. It was musty. And felt very zombie apocalyptic. Thanks mostly to Matt Maher’s savant-like ability to recall the Simpsons, we reconstructed a number of episodes, but settled on “Cape Feare” the Simpsons parody of the Scorsese movie, itself a remake of an older film, which in turn took its inspiration from a book. These Wall Street basement sessions contributed to the first part of Anne’s play – a group of survivors huddled around a fire distracting themselves from their grim circumstances with a retelling of the Simpsons' Cape Feare. The second and third parts then imagine how this story becomes theater seven years in the future, and then 75 years after that.  We had a blast doing the show in DC thanks in large part to our talented and intrepid cast and crew.  Suffice to say that the theater of our post-apocalyptic future has everything – music, sword fights, masks, violence, rap, Britney, Gilbert and Sullivan. It alas, does not have electricity.

So, all that’s the prologue to the most important thing, which is that the lead writer for The Simpsons Cape Feare episode, Jon Vitti, read about our show in The New York Times and came with his wife from LA to see the show in DC. And then sent a copy of the script. In case you can't read the note it says "To the Human Race - preserve and protect this script! Forever!!!"  

Along with this lovely note:   

We have promised him that his script has been placed in a zombie-proof vault so that when the apocalypse comes his episode will remain. And our culture will live on. 

If you’d like to see an interview with Anne Washburn and some clips from our production check out HERE 

And to hear a podcast about the process of making Mr. Burns  have a listen HERE:   

Mr. Burns: The Podcast

Anne Wasburn's new play is currently receiving its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC. Almost all of the recollection of the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons that the characters do in the first act is from a Civilians workshop in 2008, in which a group of Associate Artists led by Anne Washburn and Steve Cosson attempted to recreate the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons from memory. This podcast episode features some of the hilarious audio taken during that workshop. This episode also has an interview with playwright Anne Washburn, who discusses the role of the workshop in her creative process and her interest in this subject matter. Matt Maher, an actor in the original workshop and a Simpsons savant, then speaks about the exercises in the workshop and even tells us about his personal favorite Simpsons moments. Composer Michael Friedman talks about the music in the play and shares an excerpt of his post-Apocalyptic score of jumbled pop hits, as well as some of the music from the third act in which The Simpsons have spawned a whole new mythology and entertainment.

We're so excited to be able to bring you this behind the scenes look at this show, which has been called "kookily brilliant" and "inexhaustibly brilliant" in the Washington Post!

And don't miss the show's trailer:


TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU PODCAST SERIES ON ITUNES, PLEASE CLICK HERE!

Mr. Burns, a post-electric play

Check out the blog post on Woolly Mammoth's blog about Mr. Burns, a post-electric play discussing our role in the show's development. Here's an excerpt:

In 2008, a group of Civilians Associate Artists set out to explore the notion of a post-apocalyptic Simpsons narrative. Playwright Anne Washburn, director Steve Cosson, and six actors got together for a one week workshop focused on the topic. They did many different kinds of improvisation exercises, one of which was focused on recreating theCape Feare episode of The Simpsons from memory (and as it turns out, our Associate Artist Matt Maher was incredibly good at this). Anne Washburn then took her notes and audio recordings and started writing what is now Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. The Act 1 recollection of the Simpsons episode is pulled almost verbatim from these exercises. The rest of Act I, and Acts II and III were created by Anne, although very much inspired by the energy and capacity of the original actors and by her discussions with Steve. The characters share first names –and some share a few characteristics—with the actors in the original workshop. We’ll leave you to find out who is who, and to guess which qualities match up with their real-life counterparts!

For the whole post, click HERE!

The show is starting it's first day of tech today, with the first performance on May 28. This new show by Anne Washburn with music by Michael Friedman directed by Steve Cosson is not to be missed - get tickets HERE!