LIGHTNING JAR THEATRE STUDY NOTES, PART B I |] Mr. Burns, a post-electric play by Anne Washburn Score by Michael Friedman Lyrics by Anne Washburn Directed by John Kachoyan Musical Direction by Andrew PattersonCONTENTS 1_Introduction to Study Notes 2_Outline of VCE Drama Unit 3 3_Notes on the Play: Anne Washburn 4 Director's Note: John Kachoyan 5_APost-Electric World: A Word from Assistant Director Ben Walter 6_Q&A: Director John Kachoyan 7 Stagecraft Elements 8_Q&A: Set & Costume Designer Sophie Woodward 9_Q&A: Lighting Designer Richard Vabre 10_Q&A: Sound Designer Russell Goldsmith 11_Dramatic Elements 12_Venue & Season Information Production images: Sarah Walker “Mr, Burns, a post-electric play” is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.INTRODUCTION TO STUDY NOTES, PART B These Study Notes are intended to provide students with further context, insights and information around Lightning Jar Theatre's production of Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Part B leads on from the introductory information of Part A. It contains design imagery and production photography from the theatrical season, as well as interviews with the core creative team that interrogate the show's stagecraft elements. It also examines some of the dramatic elements in use throughout the production. Please refer to the below extract from the VCE Drama Study Design for the key knowledge and skills you should seek to demonstrate in your responses to the production. DRAMA UNIT 3 - AREA OF STUDY 3 ANALYSING AND EVALUATING A PROFESSIONAL DRAMA PERFORMANCE In this area of study students analyse and evaluate a professional drama performance selected from the prescribed VCE Drama Unit 3 Playlist. Students analyse the actors’ use of expressive and performance skills to represent character and to communicate meaning in the performance. They consider how the actor-audience relationship is created and manipulated and analyse and evaluate how the conventions, dramatic elements, production areas and performance styles are used in the performance. OUTCOME 3 On completion of this unit the student should be able to analyse and evaluate a professional drama performance. Key knowledge + performance styles and conventions and their use in performance + the actors’ use of expressive and performance skills to represent characters in performance + manipulation of dramatic elements and production areas to enhance performance + drama terminology associated with performance styles and practitioners from contemporary and/or historical and/or cultural traditions relevant to the performance Key skills + analyse and evaluate the representation of characters within a performance + analyse and evaluate the manipulation of conventions, dramatic elements and production areas within a performance + analyse and evaluate the use of performance styles within a production + analyse and evaluate the actors’ use of expressive and performance skills in a performance + analyse and evaluate the establishment, maintenance and manipulation of the actor-audience relationship in a performance Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8NOTES ON THE PLAY: ANNE WASHBURN This play comes from an idea which had been knocking around in my head for years: | wanted to take a pop culture narrative and see what it meant, and how it changed, after the fall of Civilisation. | knew | wanted to start with an act of recollection, with a group of survivors trying to piece together a TV episode. And to do that, | wanted to work with a group of actors; remembering is complicated; I could make remembering up, but it would never be as rich and complex as the real thing. In 2008, Steve Cosson of The Civilians, an investigative theatre group of which | am a member, approached me about applying for a commission. | suggested this project - which had now somehow become about The Simpsons; as | remember it, Friends, Cheers, Seinfeld, were all in the mix - any show with a large and dedicated viewership. It now seems like a really fortunate choice: if any show has the bones for post-apocalyptic survival, it’s The Simpsons. So many people enjoy remembering it: retelling it, quoting it, doing the voices, the gestures; even a terribly reduced population should be able to do a reliable job of putting it back together. And the characters, when you think about them, are durable archetypes - Bart is a Trickster, Homer the Holy Fool, Marge, | suppose, is a kind of long-suffering Madonna, and then the inhabitants of Springfield are an almost endlessly rich supply of human (and non-human) personalities. That summer, Clubbed Thumb - a downtown theatre company in New York - had gotten hold of a free rehearsal space they were loaning out - a disused bank vault in a sub-basement deep under Wall Street. We met there, far underground and out of cell phone range, in a room with thick, thick doors and those wheel handles, under a range of flickering fluorescent lights, and asked a group of Civilians actors to remember Simpsons episodes as best they could. We also asked them to be mindful of the necessities of storytelling; if they couldn’t remember a detail, or a plot segue, they should - as one would, in the wild, in front of a small audience - make something up. The episode they remembered most vividly was “Cape Feare,” a parody of the Scorsese remake of the film Cape Fear, with Robert De Niro playing the role originated by Robert Mitchum. The resulting narrative, which | pieced together from several attempts, is... fairly accurate, and | used it to begin the play. There are all kinds of storytelling. There are stories we create from the air, for fun, and there are the stories which are meant to be acts of remembering. Our culture - national, family, peer, personal - is defined, not so much by what has happened to us, but by how we remember it, and the story we create from that memory. And since we don’t really create stories from the air - since all stories, no matter how fanciful, are in some way constructed from our experiences, real or imagined - all storytelling is a remaking of our past in order to create our future. Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 2DIRECTOR'S NOTE: JOHN KACHOYAN “We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely... by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria — which is our actual experience.” ~ Joan Didion “Television! Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover." ~ Homer Simpson I was raised on (and perhaps by) The Simpsons. Its 651-episode run a monolith of culture; a meta- textual, satirical, sometimes musical, often surreal and above all ‘meaningless’ entertainment. The amount of previously unremembered quotes that have floated to the surface during rehearsals makes me wonder what else I've forgotten to store this golden-age trove of trivia. It's a comfort to me, a joy to remember and even when the quote isn't quite right, it's the tone that mattered, the memory of the humour, of my childhood. Nostalgia and memory are powerful forces at work in Mr. Burns, a post-electric play - a fascinating, sometimes dark but ultimately beautiful work. It’s also a piece intimately concerned with why humans tell stories, who carries those stories and why those stories survive - the obsessions of theatre too. Theatre culture exists in a half-remembered state. Unless you were actually there in the audience that night, it remains apocryphal, ephemeral and impermanent. Generations lose and ‘rediscover’ texts, old works are ‘reimagined’ for new times, others by quirks of publication or memory get passed down and some are simply lost. Most of Shakespeare's works were never published in his lifetime, and reconstructed versions exist with huge variations (think of the so-called Bad Quartos). We know of several Greek plays by major writers only because of a reference in a rival play, the actual text lost to time. The burning of the Library at Alexandria set knowledge back some 1000 years - with many technologies, thoughts and theories lost forever. So in a world of automated cloud-back ups, what happens to all our knowledge, our culture when the lights go out? Could you remember your favourite play or just the plot? Your favourite song or just the chorus? Would anyone still alive know how a nuclear reactor works? | can't make a battery from scratch, can you? These and a million more questions pop up when diving into Mr. Burns. It's a work of bold ideas, formal bravery and ultimately perhaps, it asks: what happens to a story pushed past the point of the apocalypse? In a world devoid of Google, Wikipedia and Netflix, how will our stories endure and change? How does pop culture of one era become the high art of another? And how do we use the entertainment of our time to make sense of our past and present? See, these and millions more - however, this isn't a thesis or cold exploration - human concerns and heart drive it forward. Thus, the magic and power of our play seem to lie more in its cumulative effect. In Act 1, a group of survivors of a recently post-electric age try to comfort each other by reconstructing The Simpsons episode "Cape Feare” from memory. By Act 2, this remembered episode is being performed as a live stage show by a touring troupe complete with commercials and pop medleys - where accuracy is currency. Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 23DIRECTOR'S NOTE (CONTINUED) Act 3 takes what was pop culture entertainment and morphs it into something akin to a medieval Passion Play, our characters now archetypes of good and evil, tropes that interweave pantomime, religious ceremony, ritual, Greek chorus, Broadway musical and more. Act 3 is set in a world where no one has ever seen The Simpsons, drunk hot cocoa or watched television - yet as we often do now, their society is using its myths to grapple with contemporary ideas, modern obsessions run through ‘ancient’ stories. Written in 2012 it was after all Washburn's response to September 11, but it feels more urgent in our strange post-truth, one-minute-to-midnight Doomsday Clock world. Ultimately, Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is not a play of plot or even characters, it's one of ideas, and there are a lot of them. It speaks to me of the enduring power of stories, their ability to comfort us in times of chaos; to the fact that the theatre is often said to be dying but never really dead. | like to think, in the post-apocalyptic future, if we survived long enough we'd all gather like this to remember stories we once heard and maybe make a little travelling troupe of our own - what else could we do in the ashes? From the story told huddled around a campfire to the amphitheatre and beyond, at its heart, Anne Washburn’s work is a love letter to theatre in all its glory. It’s our love letter too and we hope you enjoy it. Roe acd Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8A POST-ELECTRIC WORLD: A WORD FROM ASSISTANT DIRECTOR BEN WALTER In conversation we often refer to this play simply as ‘Mr. Burns’, or even just ‘Burns’ despite its full title being Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. This epithet gives more of an idea of what audiences can expect than the shortened title. On the back cover of the published play it says “In a future without power how will America’s most famous family survive?”. Our characters find themselves in a hypothetical future without power; without electricity; literally ‘post-electric’. But what does that actually mean? Consider for a moment, the prospect of a permanent nation-wide power outage. It’s more frightening than we might expect. Almost immediately, internet hyper-connectivity would vanish as quickly as it arrived. Traffic, telecommunications and transport systems would fail. Banking and financial security would vanish. Remember the panic of the Global Financial Crisis - imagine for a moment what would happen if these systems evaporated altogether. Data and information access would be severely curtailed - cloud-stored files would evaporate, and while data would still exist on CDs, DVDs and other hard storage, one would be hard-pressed to find a way of accessing it - after all, computers need power. Soon after, water treatment and vital pumping facilities would shut down, running clean water would disappear which in turn would entirely derail food production and agricultural sectors. ‘Medicine and healthcare systems would disintegrate. Production of pharmaceuticals would cease and medical diagnosis and imaging would become impossible. Mining and industrial metal processing would come to a grinding halt and while most developed nations do have oil in reserve, these reserves are finite and would eventually run dry. Domestic transport would dwindle and international travel would be entirely off the cards. It almost goes without saying that the luxury of driving an automobile would become archaic; a myth of the past. Beyond that, without a reliable major source of electricity we cannot make plastic, create fuel, synthesise drugs - the list goes on, ‘Most frightening perhaps, and a prime concern of Washburn’s play, is the dependence of nuclear power stations on electricity to prevent a full-scale meltdown. There are 98 nuclear reactors operating in the United States right now, each relying on grid-electricity and diesel generators to stave off disaster. A few times a year, we experience a power outage and maybe we moan about the fridge turning off, or the lack of air-con, or our phones dying but it always comes back on, right? In the world of Washburn’s play however, this outage is permanent. How would you survive? For this post-electric troupe narrative and recollection become their commodity, The Simpsons franchise their stomping ground and electricity a rare and valuable treat. Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 3Q&A: DIRECTOR JOHN KACHOYAN Tell us a little about your vision for Anne Washburn’s play. Washburn’s play is dark, touching, beautiful and funny. But we have discovered that Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is not really a work of plot or even characters - at least not quite in the naturalistic sense. The play has revealed itself as one of ideas, and there are a lot of them. It speaks to me of the enduring power of stories, their ability to comfort us in times of chaos; to the fact that the theatre is often said to be dying but never really dead. My vision for this play is to explore the three distinct worlds and times of each act - whilst keeping them connected and the progressions clear - we arrive at each new Act because of the preceding one. That also means acknowledging the above notion that the play is one of ideas, a cumulative accretion of images, emotions, stories and connections. | hope the production creates worlds that are familiar whilst being distinct, after all we've all sat around a fire at some point telling stories, but we've not done it after a massive nuclear-meltdown. Lastly for a play about stories, to make the overall arc, the grand story that is the whole play work for an audience - move them, challenge them, make them laugh and make them think. What drew you to the story of Mr. Burns? When my brothers and | gather back together at my parents’ house, my mother has actually (half- seriously) banned us from speaking in Simpsons quotes. Essentially we can have whole conversations only using these remembered tidbits - a shared and somewhat secret language. What are the challenges of directing a play with non-naturalistic performance elements and styles like Mr. Burns? One of the challenges with a play that shifts in style is to make sure you can bring the audience with you through those changes (through design, performance style etc.). The shifts, whilst very clear and deliberate in Anne’s script, risk being abrupt or disconnected if done without consideration. We must see how the remembered story of Act 1 becomes the touring play of Act 2, which becomes the weird Passion Play/Panto/Pop-Operetta of Act 3. But at the same time, we cannot see everything that goes on in the world, nor is it useful to spell it out. So a balance must be struck between building a world and assuming the audience will follow along. One of the other challenges is working to ensure the performers are grounded in the reality of each act, but also generally across the whole play - there is no point making each Act work individually (in regards to acting style etc.), when audiences will experience them as one production, as one larger experience. The Director ultimately must be involved in ‘audience-thinking’ to consider not what's fun for us or clear because of our research but to think: what is it like to experience this work for the first time, perhaps even without ever having seen The Simpsons? I. Burns, a post-electrc play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 “6STAGECRAFT ELEMENTS ‘Mr. Burns describes a world wracked by nuclear fallout and altered beyond recognition by a permanent black out. In order to create this alternative and non-naturalistic reality, the creative team utilised stagecraft elements across the production areas of set, costume, lighting and sound. In the following pages, we talk to the creative team about their manipulation of these production areas to create a non-electric world, and what challenges they faced throughout the rehearsal and production season, Rereaeks Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 7\: SET & COSTUME DESIGNER SOPHIE Mr. Burns takes place in the years following an apocalyptic event in which the electricity grid is permanently destroyed. How did you go about imagining a world without electricity and what design challenges did it involve? Looking at how the world would change after an apocalyptic event where there is no longer electricity was a key place to start when designing Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Act |, which is set not long after the event was the easiest of the three, as there are similarities to both camping and moments in life where we have power outages; we replace electricity with fire and torch light, we wear practical clothing that we may already have (or we may have looted). But once we move to Act II there is a jump of seven years and we had to imagine a world where things like torches and even candlelight are special and rare and need to be preserved. We also needed to think about what still exists in the way of clothing, props and set materials. Due to the nature of the modern world and the popularisation of a consumer-driven, ‘disposable’ lifestyle, the fashion industry churns out more clothing then needed, much of which ends up in landfill. As such, it is believable that seven years after an apocalyptic event there would still be a lot of clothing around; it then became about altering it to serve the purpose of the ‘costumes’ that the characters have made. We also wanted to reflect a very strong memory of The Simpsons, so we have tried to replicate the television show’s 2D world, but in a very DIY way that could be made from found objects. Similarly with the various set pieces (the car, FBI office and ad set); they are all made up of bits and pieces that you could find and alter. Emma Choy, Jen Bush; Mark Yeates, Victory Ndukwe, Dylan Watson, Tilly Legge and Hannah Greenwood I. Burns, a post-electrc play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 “8\: SET & COSTUME DESIGNER SOPHIE But once we make the jump to Act Ill and go another 75 years into the future, we had to imagine a world changed so dramatically as to be completely new from the one we know. Stories passed down between generations change and become something different, and the people in this Act would have never seen The Simpsons or lived in a world with electricity. We discussed things like; what happens to colour? Shape? Storyline? And this helped us create the world of Act Ill which included; the colour yellow being replaced by gold, the hair shapes being replaced with crowns, and references from other Simpsons episodes playing into costumes including the ‘gorilla vest’. We also heavily referenced a lot of contemporary apocalyptic images, placing them next to images of morality plays and other historical imagery. These juxtapositions were striking in their similarities; both showed us worlds without electricity, either as a true account of life before electricity or as a prediction of the end of days, stripped back from the trappings of our modern, electrified world. Which act was the most challenging from a design perspective? Out of the three acts | actually found Act II the most difficult to design. Act | and Act Ill came together quite quickly. | think this is because they both have strong, specific visual cues in the : Act | is centred around a fire, a scattering of chairs, etc., while Act Ill features the houseboat and a river. By comparison, Act II felt less grounded in a specific place; they are rehearsing a show but in this new world where do you rehearse a show? And how do we move between the ad, the FBI office, the car and the medley? We played with different arrangements of this but ended up settling on a plan where we could use items from Act | and III so the design would link together throughout the piece. The couch from Act | becomes a part of the car, the rostra and set pieces that later form the boat in Act Ill give us little ‘sets’ for the ad and FBI office, but also areas for quick changes and sound effects which the script requires. I. Burns, a post-electrc play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 9wv > OSTUME DESIGNER OPHIE Could you briefly describe your design methodology? Did you incorporate any new ways of working in your approach for Mr. Burns? When designing Mr. Burns | wanted to make sure there was a truth to it, that we would believe people could produce these items in a post-electric world. Therefore, | approached the design by trying to think like someone in this post-electric world, rather than in a world where we have electricity, shops, computers etc. It needed to feel dirty and DIY but also demonstrate that the characters care enough to put in time and work on their craft. | wanted to keep the feeling of fear and danger throughout, so that by Act III we can watch the show as a morality play; we fear Mr Burns, Itchy and Scratchy because they represent the downfall of society as we know it, while the Simpsons characters are the embodiment of humanity's hope for the future - a far cry from the comical figures we see today. Pend I. Burns, a post-electrc play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 -10How do you design lighting for a play set in a post-electric world? With extreme difficulty and extreme caution! For me it feels like the strongest element of the production is the post-electric world that it occurs in, and therefore it’s essential to honour that concept by not using visible electrical lights. Some productions have just resigned themselves to showing theatre lights. | think that that is a bit of a cop-out, so I’m going to embrace the challenge. Other productions of this play have been performed in venues where it is possible to hide lights or to disguise their source. At fortyfivedownstairs, because the venue is so open and exposed, I’m going to attempt to be extra sneaky with my hiding spots and to use some non- conventional fixtures..... What was the most challenging thing about the lighting design for Mr. Burns? Finding places to hide lights and to embrace the post-electric nature of the world that the play exists in are definitely the most challenging aspects of the Mr. Burns lighting design. Act III is the most challenging section to light, because it is the most theatrical presentation in the play. It requires shifts of mood and action as would any theatrical presentation, but it exists wholly in the post-electric world. Also as you will see in our production the stage design makes it even more difficult to hide lights, so the whole enterprise was challenging from that perspective. Tilly Legge, Dylan Watson, Hannah Greenwood and Mark Yeates Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 a1eee How does lighting design integrate with other stagecraft elements such as set design and sound design? | always work as closely as | can with stage and sound designers to make a fully integrated production. With this production, because | am trying to disguise so many hiding spots for theatre lights, it is essential that | am in constant contact with the stage designer about where I can get my lighting shots from. Liaison with sound design is more about shifts of mood or action within the production. ee ec Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 “2SIGNER RUSSELL GOLDSMITH How did you approach creating the sound design for Mr. Burns? What were some of your key influences? The first point of discussion between the Director and I was about the nature of the play, its setting and period. There are clearly defined challenges that immediately present themselves in creating sounds for this work - namely that the world has been plunged into darkness, and that all sources of power have been rendered inoperable. This dictated that the majority of the sound that the audience hears, particularly in the first act, would be of the “natural world’, and create a realistic atmosphere in which the action can take place. There are some departures from this, but that has been our starting point. The other thing that | have insisted on is that we cram as many sonic "inside jokes” from The Simpsons into the show as possible, from the pre show music to the foley sounds that the cast make. Es Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 3SIGNER RUSSELL GOLDSMITH How does sound design integrate with other stagecraft elements such as set design, lighting and props? | love working closely with my fellow designers, and find that their work is often the catalyst that sparks a world of possibilities | hadn't considered. In this piece, the settings that have been created for the work dictate both creatively and practically what | can achieve, and what is un- represented that I need to create through sound. In Act Il, the practical sounds that the cast make are a true collaboration between myself and Sophie, the Designer, needing to both sound and look a particular way to satisfy both departments. Mr. Burns is a play with music - how does that impact on your work for the sound design? The musical elements that are embedded in the script have provided a great deal of information for me about the tone and scope of the “non-musical" aspects of the show, and as the production continues to be worked and rehearsed, more and more opportunities present themselves to integrate my work in and around the existing “scored” aspects of the show. Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 “4DRAMATIC ELEMENTS There are a range of dramatic elements being manipulated throughout the production, both by the actors and through the use of stagecraft elements. CLIMAX The play utilises several moments of climax throughout. Perhaps the most obvious is at the end of Act Il when the intruder breaks into the troupe’s rehearsal space. Many of the characters also have individual moments of climax in their narratives: for instance when Gibson hears that the troupe is negotiating for “Heretic Homer” and realises that he doesn’t remember the discussion; or when Quincy suggests that Maria leave the troupe because she’s not pulling her weight. Q: What would you say are the key moments of climax in each Act? How was climax manipulated in each instance? CONFLICT There are many examples of conflict in Mr. Burns. Moments of conflict between characters are used both naturalistically (e.g. the argument between Quincy and Maria in Act Il) and non- naturalistically (e.g. the fight between Bart and Mr Burns in Act III). There are also moments of internal conflict, for instance when Bart decides he will fight Mr Burns and not simply accept defeat in Act Ill. Q: How is conflict manipulated throughout the production? Is conflict generally resolved through the actions of the play, or are there moments when it is left unresolved? CONTRAST Contrast is used to differentiate the three Acts of Mr. Burns, each of which is set at a distinct “after” moment. There is also an internal contrast between the characters we meet in Act |, and how they appear in Act II following a seven year gap. low is contrast demonstrated throughout the play? How does the manipulation of contrast add to the narrative development and representation of characters within the performance? MOOD ‘Mood is manipulated by the expressive and performance skills of the actors, as well as through the stagecraft elements of lighting, sound, set and costume design. Q: Thinking about mood, what moments in the play evoked a particularly strong emotional response for you as an audience member? How were the stagecraft elements involved? What about the actors’ performances? Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 15DRAMATIC ELEMENTS RHYTHM Rhythm appears in different ways in the play. Each Act has its own particular rhythm which speeds up or slows down with moments of conflict and climax. As a play with music, rhythm also plays a key part for the Acts which feature musical sections (in particular Act Ill). jow is rhythm manipulated throughout the performance? How do other dramatic elements impact the rhythm of each Act, and of the play as a whole? SOUND Sound is integral to the production and forms a central part of the actors’ expressive and performance skills, especially with the use of music in Acts II and III. Sound is also used by the stagecraft elements to enhance the mood and tension of the play through diegetic sound design. Q: How is sound used to enhance the performance by the actors? How do the stagecraft elements manipulate sound? SPACE Each act is set in a distinct space: around a camp fire, in a rehearsal venue, and on a performance stage. Each space is further separated by the use of distinct temporal settings: a few months after the disaster, then seven years later, then 75 years later. low does the use of space affect the rhythm and mood of each Act? How is space manipulated by the stagecraft elements of lighting, sound and set design? TENSION The play uses tension to drive the narrative forward and heighten the drama throughout. Tension is portrayed through the actors’ performance and expressive skills, but it is also emphasised through stagecraft elements (in particular through sound design). Q: What moments of tension can you think of from the production? How was tension linked to mood, conflict and climax? Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 “16VENUE & SEASON INFORMATION SEASON DATES 15 February - 10 March, 2019 VENUE fortyfivedownstairs 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne, 3000 PERFORMANCE TIMES Wednesday - Saturday, 7.30pm Sunday, 5.00pm Wednesday 27 February & Wednesday 6 March, 1.30pm Saturday 22 February, Saturday 2 March & Saturday 9 March, 2.30pm DURATION Approximately 140 minutes, including one 20 minute interval ATTENDANCE INFORMATION The performance contains simulated violence, mild flashing lights and smoke effects. Guns are used during the performance and two characters are shot. Some offensive language is used. The reading of a list of lost loved ones could be disturbing to some students. BOOKINGS Please email info@fortyfivedownstairs.com or call 03 9662 9966 to request a school bookings form. Nr, Burns, a post-electric play - STUDY NOTES, PART 8 7