Burning Mom

After suddenly losing her husband, Dorothy (Susinn McFarlen) makes an unusual decision that shocks her family. She decides to take their RV on a road trip no one sees coming: from Calgary to Burning Man, in Nevada. After all, it’s only a 21-hour drive to a weeklong culture festival and party with no plumbing in the middle of a desert—how hard can it be? Burning Mom is a stirring odyssey of self-discovery and tale of how art, everlasting roads, and human connection propel her along the way.

“I think even though the play came out of my dear father’s passing, it’s become a story about life, about finding that path back to life again,” said playwright and director Mieko Ouchi. “The desert provides the most moving images of Burning Man—the scale and the size of these minuscule humans in this incredibly empty space. I think it’s a beautiful metaphor for that sense of loneliness and how solitary we as humans are in the world in those moments of grief. I hope people leave with that sense of possibility that they could do something fantastical like what my mom did, because it is totally possible.”