“Anne Washburn is America’s bard of the peripherally glimpsed, the half-eavesdropped, the shakily grasped. Her plays immerse characters in baffling subcultures, and the audience must follow along . . . Abundant wonder, whimsy, even horror . . . Washburn finds the beauty and strangeness of playmaking, the nobility of an often futile pursuit.”
—David Cote, Time Out New York
“Fascinating and hilarious . . . With each of its three acts, Mr. Burns grows grander . . . Washburn reminds us of the ways stories survive and adapt with us, how their specifics and lessons change to the society that tells them, how their meaning is inconstant but our need for that meaning, whatever it happens to be at a given time, is pure and permanent . . . This play demonstrates the power and primacy of theater itself.”
—Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
“10 Out of 12 is steeped in a doubt-tinged religious wonder that, at some point in an unforeseeable future, unity may emerge from this calibrated chaos . . . The evening’s accumulated frustrations blend joyously into a wholly original love song to the maddening art of the theater.”
—Ben Brantley, New York Times
“Mr. Burns has a very distinct kind of thrill, the one that kicks in when you have absolutely no idea where a play is going, except that it is not likely to be any place you recall being before in a theater. This thrill is one of expansiveness of vision—an intellectual rush, a sense of unexplored theatrical possibility, a fearlessness of operation.”
—Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“Mr. Burns is one of the most spectacularly original plays in recent memory.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Gradually this absurd, unreal performance comes to encapsulate not just the old, now-mythical way of life and the new one within the world of the play, but also our own. It feels increasingly like one of the oldest Greek dramas which served to affirm the polis to which actors and audience alike belonged . . . The intellectual fascination of the patterned material of Mr. Burns meshes with an emotional significance on an instinctual level.”
—Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times
“Washburn’s play Mr. Burns is pretty out there in many respects, but each scenario is beautifully realized, and it presents a compelling query: Faced with uncertainty, would we salvage what’s ‘important’ for the human race? Or what comforts us? And is there really a difference? . . . Even if you’ve somehow never seen a frame of The Simpsons (though seriously, have a word with yourself), the bold vistas of Washburn’s imagination are thrillingly provocative in themselves . . . its message is ultimately a comforting one: Just like cockroaches and Twinkies, theater and stories will survive the end of days, no matter how strangely.”
—Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out London
Mr. Burns and Other Plays is copyright © 2017 by Anne Washburn
I Have Loved Strangers, The Small, Mr. Burns and 10 Out of 12 are copyright © 2017 by Anne Washburn
Mr. Burns and Other Plays is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Mark Subias, United Talent Agency, 888 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10106, (212) 659-2600.
“The Small,” copyright © 1956 by Theodore Roethke; from Collected Poems by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. “Die Flabbergast,” copyright © 1977 by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; from Good Evening: A Comedy-Revue in Two Acts. Samuel French, Inc. All rights reserved.
The publication of Mr. Burns and Other Plays by Anne Washburn, through TCG’s Book Program, is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This publication was supported by the Vilcek Foundation, dedicated to fostering appreciation of the arts and sciences.
TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.
Library of Congress Control Numbers:
2016039313 (print) / 2016045561 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-55936-794-3 (ebook)
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Book design and composition by Lisa Govan
Cover design and art by Douglas Miller
First Edition, February 2017
For my folks
For Gordon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing/making of plays is a horror show and a joy. I owe a great deal more than is compassed here.
My deep deep thanks, first of all, to the directors, creative teams, casts, and crews of all of these shows.
Profound thanks to Roger Rees, for initiating the leapFROG program under which I Have Loved Strangers was written, for some very important words of encouragement, and for an off-the-cuff witticism which became a major plot point. Thanks also to director Johanna McKeon for, well, lots, but also for an important nature walk, and to Amanda Charlton for finding me a lake house to complete the play and for teaching me how to make slow-cooked scrambled eggs deep in the night after the final performance at Williamstown during a thunderstorm.
Great thanks to Erik Ehn, whose silent playwriting technologies have been an inspiration and cornerstone of the last almost-decade of my writing life; the first draft of The Small came from the very first silent playwriting retreat at the delightful NACL, run by Tannis Kowalchuk and Brad Krumholz.
Mr. Burns was a bear to make and requires a whole separate passel of thanks, the most enormous of which go to both Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman. Thanks to Miriam Weisfeld, Adam Greenfield, and Rupert Goold, for some very fruitful notes, and to Robert Icke, whose thoughts while working on the Almeida production took the play to its very final form. I want to especially thank Howard Shalwitz of Woolly Mammoth, who cottoned on to the first ragged draft of the play and rather boldly determined not only to produce it but also to develop it along with Seattle Repertory Theatre. Deep thanks to Jerry Manning and Tim Sanford. Special thanks to Carey Perloff, and thanks much to Jeremy Wechsler who let me sit in on his great production in Chicago.
And I very especially want to thank the original group of Civilians’ actors who worked on the first stirrings of this play, and after whom the characters are named. To the Seattle actors who helped us workshop the play, as well as the first full cast in D.C., who were very brave and bold and great under a slew of revisions. And the New York cast who