Burning Mom addresses life after loss through one woman's RV journey down to the desert
At the Arts Club, actor Susinn McFarlen plays 63-year-old Dorothy, who travels to Burning Man after losing her husband
Susinn McFarlen.
The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Burning Mom on the Granville Island Stage from March 27 to April 20
EVERY SUMMER IN the middle of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a pop-up city emerges on the playa. It’s there, under the scorching sun, with nothing around for miles, that Burning Man takes place.
The arts festival dedicated to self-expression welcomes people from all walks of life for a week of interactive community performances, all-night partying, and spiritual experiences. It is certainly not for the faint of heart—but it might just be the perfect place for one woman to figure out her own matters of the heart.
In playwright and director Mieko Ouchi’s Burning Mom, 63-year-old Dorothy’s husband passes away unexpectedly, leaving her with the RV they had been planning their retirement around. So she decides to drive it from her home in Calgary all the way down to Burning Man in the southern U.S. desert in the hope of realizing the dream she shared with her husband.
Susinn McFarlen, who plays the role of Dorothy in the upcoming Arts Club Theatre Company production, opening March 27, says that her character’s journey is propelled by questions around how to navigate life without a partner.
“Even though it’s about loss, it is also about how to move on from loss,” McFarlen says. “And as an actress…my desire is not just to be there talking to the members of the audience that have experienced this—because I think that it will be very profound for them to be in the room—but also for people to understand what the people they love are going through. I myself have several friends who have lost their partners, and it helps me understand what they are going through.”
McFarlen is a Vancouver-based, Jessie Richardson Theatre Award–winning artist who has appeared in everything from Hello Dolly! at the Vancouver Playhouse to Touchstone Theatre’s Lights at the Firehall Arts Centre. She is cofounder and co–artistic director of Wet Ink Collective, a writer-driven initiative for women developing stage and film stories, alongside Loretta Seto and Lynna Goldhar Smith.
As a playwright, McFarlen’s works include Since You Left Us, a dark comedy about how a recovering alcoholic’s dysfunctional relationship with her family changes after her son runs away from home; and They’re Naked, They’re Ugly and They Owe Us Money, a feminist comedy that just had a reading presented by Eighth & Eight at the Massey Theatre’s Plaskett Gallery.
Burning Mom is based on Ouchi’s life; when the playwright lost her own father, Eugene, her mother Dorothy took a trip to Burning Man that helped her find her path again. Throughout the process of bringing this play to life, McFarlen has had the chance to hear plenty of stories about Ouchi’s family members and their tight-knit and loving dynamic. That close bond translates into Burning Mom too.
“The message of the play is very hopeful,” McFarlen says. “It’s funny and ultimately hopeful. So even though it is birthed in these tragic circumstances, it’s an uplifting play.”
Set designer Patrick Rizzotti worked with Ouchi to transform her mother’s actual RV into a key element of the show’s staging. Part of the magic in Burning Mom will be seeing how Dorothy’s journey down to the desert is brought to life within the bounds of the Granville Island Stage.
Another important aspect of the production, McFarlen says, is Dorothy’s desire to prove to herself that she is not past adventure.
“It’s hard work following your dreams, the play certainly says that,” the actor acknowledges. “But I think it’s more about how to move on from the circumstances of life, which are ever-changing. I guess it’s like falling off your bike, you know? You just get up and you get back on that bike. Or if you can’t, you figure out another way of getting down that road.”
If you’re lucky, the other way to get down the road might just be an air-conditioned RV. 
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