Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumni and faculty are on the creative team of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, Anne Washburn’s comedy/drama/musical about a post-apocalyptic world comforted by memories of The Simpsons, which begins performances August 27 at Theater Wit, located at 1229 W. Belmont in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. The show marks Theater Wit’s return to live performance after the pandemic shutdown of 2020. For tickets, click here.
Heather Gilbert
The show’s lighting designer is faculty member Heather Gilbert, a teacher in the Theatre Department’s Theatre Design program.
David Woolley
Jon Beal
Kai Young
The show features “violence design” by David Woolley, the faculty coordinator of the Theatre Department’s Stage Combat Minor program, and Columbia College alums Jon Beal ’11 and Kai Young ’12, both graduates of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting.
A paean to the restorative power of live theater and the resilience of Bart Simpson through the ages, Mr. Burns is an animated, hilarious exploration of how one generation’s pop culture might evolve into the mythology of another’s. The story begins right after a global catastrophe. Life as we know it has ended. Small bands of survivors have banded together for safety. They travel in pods to keep the pilot light of civilization burning. But one pod’s path to redemption is as unexpected as it is inevitable.
