MSU’s Department of Theatre and Dance will present “Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play” Feb. 29-March 4 in Coger Theatre, Craig Hall.

Assistant professor of theatre and dance Karen Sabo directs the play.

Show times are Feb. 29-March 2, 7:30 p.m. and March 3, 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors. MSU students can receive special advance purchase discounts with an MSU ID.

A post-apocalyptic play with a quirky pop culture twist

“Mr. Burns” has been on Karen Sabo’s radar for some time.

“This is a play I’ve been pitching to places for quite a few years because I have wanted to direct it,” she said.

Sabo was intrigued both by the play’s storyline and its backstory.

“The playwright, Anne Washburn, was commissioned to write it about ten years ago by a New York City theatre group called The Civilians, and they asked her to explore what would happen to a pop culture narrative after a breakdown of society,” Sabo explained.

The resulting three-act play explores that “breakdown” by transporting audiences through 75 years in a post-apocalyptic society.

Most of the population has died, nuclear plants are unattended and leaking, and the electric grid is gone in this dreary world.

The survivors seek solace in performance. One of their immediate outlets is to reenact excerpts from the pop culture phenomenon “The Simpsons.”

Spanning generations to celebrate the dramatic impulse

Sabo and her assistant director, senior theater education major RyLea Clark, described “Mr. Burns” as a show that celebrates youth culture, theater history and the human dramatic impulse.

“I think it’s a perfect play to do on college campuses for students because it marries art and entertainment so well, and for all those students taking Intro-to-Theatre-type courses, it incorporates a lot of material they learn, such as about the universal human impulse to dramatize stories,” Sabo said.

“Everyone knows the Simpsons,” said Clark, highlighting the cross-generational relatability of the play’s subject matter.

Sabo’s production team was eager to start working on the creative aspects of the project in part because of that pop culture connection.

“They’re excited to work on the show because it legitimizes an element of pop culture, and that’s really important to the lives of young people,” Sabo said. “I know that TV shows, especially cartoons, can seem like meaningless ephemera, but they’re the stories of our times and represent who we are at this moment.”

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