Director's Notes

Normally, I like a play to speak for itself. There are exceptions, like Brecht’s Jungle of the Cities, where, even armed with a synopsis, it’s very hard to understand what is going on. But I am of the mind that the less said, the better. If we as theatre makers do our job, the play will do its work on you without any preamble or commentary after the fact. As Grotowski said, “theatre should not duplicate what literature is doing.” What a case am I in then, (as Rosalind confided to her audience when asked to comment on her play), who has been asked to give you a few hundred words about Mr. Burns.

Not that there is nothing to say about this one-of-a-kind play. There is plenty to say. But there are also spoilers. In fact, this play is filled with so many spoilers it might as well be a whodunit. And I think those surprises should be jealously guarded until their appointed time and are important to your enjoyment of the play. So how do I talk about Mr. Burns without telling you anything?

There is a lot of pop culture in this play. There is, obviously, The Simpsons. But there are also references to films like Cape Fear, Do the Right Thing and Night of the Hunter; references to songs like Britney Spears’ Toxic and Ricky Martin’s Livin La Vida Loca; as well as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and HMS Pinafore. There are even pop culture catchphrases that the characters will toss off without knowing their origins. In fact, pop culture becomes a kind of currency in the play. This currency is traded fairly freely in the beginning. But, by the time we get to the end, it has become the rarest and most valuable thing in the world.

Pop culture, of course, is not what Mr. Burns is about. Just like Death of a Salesman is not about salesmen, How I Learned to Drive is not about driving and The Piano Lesson is not about a piano.

What the play is about cannot not be described, it can only be experienced in real time in the theatre. For those of you who know something about the play, we hope to be a worthy guide on this singular journey.

For those of you who know nothing about it, I envy you. You have a front row seat to a story so strange and beautiful, that it becomes less of a play than a kind of alchemy or sorcery. “Magic” is the overworked word that has become a cliché of theatre marketing and stage reviews. But if it was true of any play, it is certainly true of Mr. Burns. But not a stage conjurer’s magic, not a set of magician’s tricks – real magic.

Imagine that.