Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

After having closed their doors for nearly a year due to the pandemic, CATCO reopened their theatre venues with Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn. Because the city was still operating under pandemic restrictions, I collaborated with the artistic director on ways to stage this challenging story while keeping our actors and the public safe. The play itself imagines a global catastrophe in the near, far and distant future, creating three distinct acts separated by many years. We decided to locate each act in a different venue in the building.

In act one, the lobby of the building became a post-apocalyptic mall with chairs gathered for the audience. For act two, I turned their black box theatre into an empty industrial building with skylights. Act three reimagined their proscenium theatre as a revitalized venue seventy-five years in the future that enlisted the rough technology of baroque theatre. Michael Grossberg of The Columbus Dispatch noted:

"Brad Steinmetz's junkyard-repurposed set designs in three studio spaces ... reinforce the play's epic and tragicomic progression."

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I brought one of my graduate students, Braden Graves, to work with me as Assistant Designer on this project. He needed more experience with drafting in Vectorworks and I charged him with generating all the design drafting for the production.