The cast of Mr. Burns performs a scene featuring The Simpsons.
While stepping into the Gelb Theater for the fall production, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, audiences were met with a time-traveling and musical-esque play featuring The Simpsons. Directed by theater faculty member Mr. Bari Robinson and starring nine Choate actors, the play discusses how society rebuilds itself after a traumatic and apocalyptic event.
The first act introduces the audience to survivors who gather after a nuclear apocalypse. They bond over the only thing they have in common: the fuzzy recollection of The Simpsons episode “Cape Feare.” Working together, they summarize the episode while recounting their familial losses.
The second act follows those same characters, who form a theater troupe together. The ensemble creates a television show composed of their memories, which are used as currency in the new society, while trying to dominate competing troupes. As the characters adjust to this new reality, the effect of the nuclear event on their mental health is highlighted.
The final act — set 75 years later — is a musical version of “Cape Feare” that has been codified into a religion. In the final scene, electricity is reintroduced into this post-apocalyptic society.
Getting the play off the ground was no easy task, but the students involved shared positive experiences with the rehearsal process. Harper Marsden-Uren ’26, who played Colleen and Bart, said, “A lot of what I was working on in the rehearsal was building my confidence and feeling comfortable with my classmates and in front of my director. I feel like a lot of the knowledge that I garnered from Bari was so valuable.”
The cast also grew extremely close over the rehearsal process. Judah Brecher ’25, who played Gibson, Sideshow Bob, and Homer, particularly enjoyed tech week. He said, “It was a mix of everyone being panicked, excited, and exhausted. It was fun because the bonding of the cast really happened then.”
Other cast members spoke about their interest in the musical aspect of the play. Jasmine Khuu ’24, who played a toy glockenspiel and sang, did not have any speaking lines. “My character in the play is very specific to the musical experience,” she said. “What I thought was very intriguing about the play was that most of its songs are either based on very characteristic, unique melodies that everyone has heard from The Simpsons before.”
Mr. Robinson chose Mr. Burns partly because of the valuable learning experience it would provide for students. “I think Mr. Burns is a really good teaching play because it has a lot of different theatrical styles that you have to touch on in order to be successful at the play. There’s really straightforward narrative storytelling, commercials where they have to mimic other performances, music, mask work.”
Furthermore, Mr. Robinson saw a message in the play that resonated with him and the cast. “Thematically, the play, in a lot of ways, is about what people do after a very traumatic event. We’ve all experienced a very traumatic event recently with Covid-19. How do people build back their lives in this case, after all their family members died from a nuclear event? How do you get society back up?”
The message was one of hope: “It won’t be like what it was before, but maybe it’s something new and interesting; we will go on and survive,” he described.
The performances lived up to the actors’ hopes. Brecher simply described the feeling of being on stage as “dopamine.”
Khuu said, “The audience was great, and it really brought the mood and ambience up. Everyone was having so much fun and enjoying themselves.”
