“Mr. Burns is so smart it makes your head spin…Downright brilliant. This intoxicating and sobering vision of an American future, set during a day-after tomorrow apocalypse…has depths of feeling to match its breadth of imagination… In tracing a story’s hold on the imaginations of different generations, the play is likely to make you think back—way back—to narratives that survive today from millenniums ago…With grand assurance and artistry, Ms. Washburn makes us appreciate anew the profound value of storytelling in and of itself… 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.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

“Washburn is not your ordinary playwright. The pleasures of her work are fugitive, sidelong and slippery.” —David Cote, Time Out New York

“10 Out of 12 is inventive, surprising and astonishing…What emerges is an engaging and unexpectedly poignant tribute to all the mess and waste and hurt and boredom and bother and idiocy and passion and brilliance and devotion and love that go into the premiere of any new play.” —Alexis Soloski, Village Voice

“Mr. Burns is both scary and sweet, funny but dead serious, unique and wonderfully theatrical.” —Richard Zoglin, TIME Magazine

Anne Washburn’s plays blend naturalistic human presence with formal thought experiments that drive at the question of what storytelling means to human survival. Via high-and-low storytelling, Washburn writes about contemporary and near-future culture, calling on Homer, Euripides, the prophet Jeremiah, the world of fantasy games and The Simpsons. This volume also contains 10 Out of 12, The Small and I Have Loved Strangers.

Anne Washburn’s plays include The Internationalist, The Communist Dracula Pageant and Antlia Pneumatica. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship and a Time Warner Fellowship. She is a member of 13P, The Civilians, and she is a New Georges affiliated artist.