CARTOON TWIST ONSTAGE
University Players in 60th season
The apocalypse is coming. Doh! University Players theatre company raises the curtain on its 60th season Friday with Mr. Burns: A Post Electric Play. It’s a “dark futuristic take on The Simpsons,” set in a near-apocalyptic future when the world is without electricity. “The major theme of the show is about the importance of storytelling if an apocalypse happened and we didn’t have any more electronics or ways of entertaining ourselves, or being able to go back and look at things that remind of us of our past,” said director Lezlie Wade. “How important would the concept of storytelling be? As the play progresses, the art of storytelling or the act of storytelling becomes such an urgent and important aspect that people are actually paying to remember bits and pieces of stories.” University Players features student performers from the University of Windsor’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting program, and guest directors from the Stratford and Shaw festivals.
Other productions this season will include A Streetcar Named Desire, Journey ’s End, The Penelopiad, God of Carnage, and Love and Information.
Mr. Burns is written by Anne Washburn and directed by Wade, who directed last year’s University Players production of Les Belles Soeurs. She is also in her sixth Stratford Festival season, where her production of An Ideal Husband runs through October. In Mr. Burns, a group of friends who have bonded over their fight for survival retell The Simpsons episode “Cape Feare,” which was a parody of the Cape Fear movies. The dark comedy then jumps ahead seven years, when the group has formed a performance troupe specializing in Simpsons episodes, including the commercials. Audiences are then taken an- other 75 years into the future. The Simpsons episode has become a myth and reworked into a musical pageant, which has spawned several theatre groups doing other shows such as The West Wing. “Each group buys lines that other people can remember,” said Wade. The theatre company calls it “a musical tribute to the modern mythology of pop culture.” “We live in a world right now where we don’t even talk to each other,” said Wade.
“We text, we use electronic devices. But we don’t really communicate. Here we are in this play where people can’t do that, where communication is absolutely essential.”
The show runs Sept. 21-30. Evening performances from Wednesday to Saturday start at 8 p.m. in the university’s Essex Hall Theatre.
The Saturday and Sunday matinees begin at 2 p.m.
On Sept. 23, there will also be a “Talk Back” discussion with the actors following the performance. More information is available on the University of Windsor website.
As the play progresses, the art of storytelling becomes such an urgent and important aspect ...