Now it can be told: Steve Burns — the much-loved original host of the wildly popular children’s show “Blue’s Clues” — is long gone, having been replaced by an extremely life-like robot created by Elon Musk. Nah, that’s a bunch of nonsense.
And it’s perhaps one of the only theories not espoused somewhere on the internet about Burns, who spent many years dealing with all sorts of rumors after he left the show that made him famous: He was dead, he was a drug addict, he died of a heroin overdose, he perished in a one-car accident. It’s enough to fill a Snopes page — and, actually, there is a page there dedicated to this subject.
As tempting as it is to quote Mark Twain, who famously reacted to the news of his passing by saying, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”, we will refrain. Suffice to say that Burns is not only alive and well, he is appearing onstage at The Club at La MaMa in the East Village with a solo monologue that touches on the effects of a world full of misinformation on a fragile psyche.
Luckily, Burns is an accomplished storyteller (check out his tale of “Fameishness” on YouTube) who is smart, funny, touching, and philosophical. Along with director Matthew Freeman, he has created “Steve Burns Alive,” which manages to touch on many of the things that have troubled Burns over the years in a short run time.
“It was initially Matt’s idea,” Burns says of the project. “I’d done a lot of storytelling for The Moth and stuff like that, and Matt said, ‘You should put these together into some kind of format – people would be interested in hearing it,’ and I said, ‘You’re insane — no one would care!’ But he encouraged me.”
“Steve is a very naturally gifted writer and storyteller, and he’s got great stories to tell and interesting ideas about those stories,” Freeman notes. “It was about shaping it into a piece that felt complete and had something to say beyond just telling the stories.”
“We’re still working on it,” Burns adds. The piece was performed once before, a year ago, in a beautiful old library in Beacon, NY.
“We figured,” Freeman says, “let’s just see how it goes and if it works, it works.”
Although Burns has previously told stories about himself, this piece contains things that he “hadn’t told to my friends and family before.”
“It felt really raw and exposed to say these things in front of strangers,” Burns says. “It felt, perhaps, terribly unhealthy to do so, but my therapist has blessed this project, so I think it’s okay.”
“For me,” Freeman explains, “it’s not just about radical vulnerability — look at all the pain that I’m sharing — it’s about the concept of asking for help. As long as it’s in the service of that, it’s worth the discomfort.”
One of the surprising things that came out of the experience for Burns was “the really strong reactions we got from people who had never seen the show: “As a thought experiment, we decided to not mention ‘Blue’s Clues’ at all in the show.”
For himself, doing the show had a very definite effect.
“After the first one,” Burns relates, “I felt like an untethered astronaut in outer space. Right now, I feel like – have you ever seen a hermit crab that leaves its shell? Sort of a withered pink decrepit mess that’s all exposed and vulnerable to marauding seagulls? That is how I feel.”
Nevertheless, Burns continues with three performances this week, and the pair hopes that people will take away some positivity from them.
“I think that there is a confusion in the world as to how responsible we are to one another,” Freeman muses. “I think that what we are trying to get at is whether or not we are communicating through a screen, in person or on stage, we have a responsibility to each other. Connection is real — that’s the main takeaway.”
“The other half of it is,” Burns adds, “there is an expanded conversation right now about mental health, and I think that’s great. It’s about humanizing the struggle that belongs to all of us. … The struggle is not optional in this life. How we meet the struggle defines who we are. Life is hard – it’s unsatisfactory to be alive, it feels weird. It feels wonderful and weird to be alive, and we all suffer and we all struggle in some way. Eventually, we learn that it’s part of having a beautiful life, but at times it can feel too heavy for Superman to lift, and we have to pay attention to that.”
Show and ticket info is available at ticketleap.events/tickets/
