Sacred Fools Opens MR. BURNS- A Post Electric Play

SacRed Fools Theater Company is excited to kick off its 21st season with the Los Angeles premiere of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, written by Anne Washburn (score by Michael Friedman/lyrics by Anne Washburn) and directed by Jaime Robledo.

Opening Friday, October 13 and running through Saturday, November 18, with previews on October 6th, 8th and 12th, Mr. Burns also features an unusual approach for the Fools: each act will be staged in a different theater space in the newly rebranded Broadwater complex, transporting the audience through space as well as time.

About Mr. Burns, a post-electric play

After the collapse of civilization, a group of survivors keep the spark of human spirit alive by telling stories around a campfire. As the years wear on, these stories expand into the realm of legend and myth.

In his 2014 Critic's Pick review of the Playwrights Horizons production, The New York Times' Ben Brantley raved that Mr. Burns "...has arrived to leave you dizzy with the scope and dazzle of its ideas. With grand assurance and artistry, Ms. Washburn makes us appreciate anew the profound value of storytelling in and of itself, and makes a case for theater as the most glorious and durable storyteller of all."

At turns sidesplitting and bone-chilling, Mr. Burns also features an unusual approach for the Fools: the three separate time periods in the play will each take place on a separate stage in the Broadwater, taking the audience from the Broadwater Black Box to the Second Stage and finally the Main Stage. The promenade staging, to borrow a term from the world of immersive/no-proscenium theatre, begins with a group of people meeting around a campfire as the world falls apart around them.

"As you move from space to space within the newly-christened Broadwater, you will share both in the story itself and in how the telling of the story evolves," says director Jaime Robledo. "When we lose everything, we tend to go back to the beginning and build up from there. In a play about salvaging pop culture (or any culture, for that matter), telling tales around a campfire is as good a place as any to start."

Production Team and Cast

Other plays by Anne Washburn include 10 out of 12, Antlia Pneumatica, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, A Devil At Noon, I Have Loved Strangers, The Internationalist, The Ladies, The Small and transadaptations of Euripides' Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has premiered with 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, The Almeida, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classic Stage Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Folger, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Two River Theater Company, Vineyard Theater and Woolly Mammoth. Honors include a Guggenheim, a Whiting, an Alpert Award, a PEN/Laura Pels award for artist in mid-career, a NYFA Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Next Up: The Twilight Zone at the Almeida, Little Bunny Foo Foo at Actor's Theater of Louisville.

Mr. Burns is the 7th mainstage show directed by Jaime Robledo at SacRed Fools; past productions include Stoneface (LA Weekly Award, Direction), Astro Boy and the God of Comics (LA Drama Critics Circle, Stage Raw award nominations), Watson: The Last Great Tale of Sherlock Holmes (LA Weekly Award, Ovation nomination) and Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini, both of which he also authored. Robledo is also designing Sound for the production.

For Producer Brian Wallis, Mr. Burns is the 6th show directed by Robledo that he has produced for SacRed Fools. Other shows at SacRed Fools produced by Wallis include the aforementioned Stoneface, Astro Boy and the Watson plays, as well as Absolutely Filthy, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Savin' Up for Saturday Night.

The production team for Mr. Burns includes a number of SacRed Fools alumni, including Music Director Ryan Thomas Johnson (Forbidden Zone: Live in the 6th Dimension), Set Designer Joel Daavid (Gorey Stories, Stoneface), Lighting Designer Matthew Richter (Endgame, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Costume Designer Linda Muggeridge (A Gulag Mouse, Skullduggery) and Prop Designer BranDon Clark (There is a Happiness That Morning Is, Astro Boy).

The cast for Mr. Burns features Scott Golden, Heather Roberts, Tracey A. Leigh, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Tegan Ashton Cohan, Eric Curtis Johnson, Dagney Kerr, Emily Clark and Aaron Mendelson, most of whom playing multiple roles as the play moves years and then decades into the future. Understudies include Sean Faye, Ashley Eskew, Dana DeRuyck, Michael Shaw Fisher, Jeff Scott Carey, Adriana Colón and Shiah Luna. Known performances that will include understudies are October 22 and 29, as well as November 11 and 12.

Donate What You Can Performance - Friday, October 20

It's "Pay What You Can" with a twist! Half of all proceeds for this performance will be donated to Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid organization, active in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies.

Since 2013, SacRed Fools has held a DWYC performance for each mainstage show, partnering with close to 20 different organizations, raising over $5,000 for worthy causes.

Additional Programming

As with any mainstage show at SacRed Fools, there's always a high volume of other work taking place late nights and during the week. During Mr. Burns, our long-running late night show Serial Killers returns for its 13th season, along with installments of the open-stage night where anything can happen Ten Tops, and the curated staged reading series of new social/political works We The People. For more information on these and other items, please visit www.sacredfools.org.

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