Anne Washburn

Playwrights: Antlia Pneumatica; Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Other plays include 10 out of 12, Little Bunny Foo Foo, The Internationalist, A Devil At Noon, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, I Have Loved Strangers, The Ladies, The Small, and transadaptations of Euripides' Orestes & Iphigenia in Aulis. Her work has been produced by 13P, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Almeida, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Classic Stage Company, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Folger, The Gate, The Guthrie, Playwrights Horizons, Red Eye, Soho Rep., Studio Theater, Two River Theater Company, Vineyard Theater, and Woolly Mammoth. Honors include a Whiting, a Guggenheim, an Alpert Award, a PEN/Laura Pels Award for an artist in mid-career, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. She is an associated artist with The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Chochiqq, and is an alumna of New Dramatists and 13P.

To read Anne's essay on Tambo & Bones, click here.

Michael Friedman

Credits include Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Broadway and the Public Theater) Unknown Soldier, The Fortress of Solitude, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Mr. Burns. With The Civilians: Canard Canard Goose, Gone Missing, Nobody’s Lunch, This Beautiful City, In the Footprint, The Great Immensity, Paris Commune, Pretty Filthy, and The Abominables. He was the Artist-in-Residence and Director of the Public Forum at the Public Theater and Artistic Director of City Center Encores! Off-Center. He received the 2007 OBIE Award for sustained excellence and was honored with a star on the Playwright’s Sidewalk at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2018.  (photo by Jared Siskin)

(Updated Mar 2019)

• “DOWNRIGHT BRILLIANT. When was the last time you met a new play that was so smart it made your head spin? Get ready to reel, New York. Anne Washburn’s "Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play" 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. I LOOK FORWARD TO REMEMBERING IT FOR A LONG, LONG TIME. (Critic's Pick)”

  — Ben Brantley, NY Times | Read Full Article

• “GET IN LINE ASAP. This bizarre, funny, bleak, wonderful show is even better than its hype. Inventively directed by the Civilians’ Steve Cosson, it’s also one of the most affecting tributes to theater and tenacity you’re likely to see all year.”

  — Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post | Read Full Article

• “5 STARS. Brilliant and beguiling. The impeccable Playwrights Horizons production—staged with steely grace by Steve Cosson and acted by a terrific ensemble—does the improbable: it makes the end of civilization seem like the perfect time to create glowing objects of wonder and beauty.”

  — David Cote, Time Out New York | Read Full Article

• “ONE OF THE SMARTEST AND MOST DELIGHTFULLY ORIGINAL SHOWS TO COME ALONG IN A LONG WHILE. Anne Washburn, with exemplary assistance from director Steve Cosson and a dedicated ensemble cast, plus music by Michael Friedman, has created an odyssey of popular culture.”

  — Robert Feldberg, Bergen Record

• “AUDACIOUS. The eight-person ensemble handles the material with tremendous skill and versatility.”

  — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

• “A breathtaking, brain-teasing evening that asks you to consider how pop culture is embraced, metabolized and reinterpreted through the filters of time and cataclysmic events. The scrupulous manner in which Washburn — vitally assisted by composer Michael Friedman — works out the changes over time in the way the episode is recalled and interpreted approaches the mind-blowing.”

  — Peter Marks, Washington Post | Read Full Article

• “WILDLY INVENTIVE. Anne Washburn has produced one of the most spectacularly original plays in recent memory.”

  — Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

• “WONDERFULLY CLEVER, from the witty costumes by Emily Rebholz to Sam Pinkleton’s tongue-in-cheek choreography. The piece de resistance is the addition of Michael Friedman’s music, a pastiche of every pop song ever played.”

  — Marilyn Stasio, Variety

• “A fascinating and hilarious triumph. From hell, Mr. Burns sends us to heaven.”

  — Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice | Read Full Article

• “The play is both scary and sweet, funny but dead serious, unique and wonderfully theatrical. The night I attended, the audience was filled with twentysomethings, there on a special “under 30” night at Playwrights Horizons. I doubt that many were Simpsons fanatics. Most were barely toddlers when “Eat My Shorts” was a national catchphrase. But at the end they all stood and cheered.”

  — Richard Zoglin, Time Magazine | Read Full Article