CONCEPT

THEMES: Covering themes of memory, obsession, paranoia, and the collapse of the American-Dream, which the Simpsons evolve to represent. The survivors find comfort in the remnants of consumerist America, glorifying the everyday symbols now lost to them, and eventually deifying pop culture.

CONCEPT: To locate the play inside an old abandoned warehouse in Detroit, a city that experienced massive nuclear devastation in the 1960s. Much of Detroit already exists in a state of apocalyptic poverty, a pre-existing condition to this end-of-the-world scenario and reflective of the mini-apocalypses happening across America all the time. The cavernous warehouse - once a car manufacturer - is divided by large industrial sliding doors, which repartition the space between acts. These are utilised as traditional painted scenery flats, vertically sliding to reset the internal play-within-a-play scenes. As the years pass, the doors and surroundings are revealed to be increasingly broken down and graffitied with bright Simpsons colours - symbolic of the cartoonish worship of this world. 

All Simpsons related costumes were developed from a collection of memory drawings of the characters - no visual research of the cartoon was allowed! The ragtag Act II costumes attempt to recreate the colours and basic shapes associated with the characters, whilst injecting elements and symbols of American nostalgia. In Act III, the Springfield chorus costumes layer themes of fanatical worship, nuclear hazmat paranoia and the lasting legacy of American military power. To unsettle their humanity, all characters are goggled and barely resemble their origins. In lieu of any clarification about the state of this world, these costumes imply all that is known about this deranged surviving society.