Kansas as Theater of the Absurd

KANSAS AS THEATER OF THE ABSURD

“What of this theater? Is it, as it
has been accused of being, obscure
sordid, destructive, antitheater, 
perverse, and absurd (in the sense
of foolish?”—Edward Albee, “Which
Theater Is The Absurd One?” 
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Kansas as Theater of the Absurd

Kansas as like Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape,” Jean Genet’s “The Balcony” and Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”
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The works of Beckett, Ionesco and Genet are no more absurd than my modern soap opera existence out here in the countryside west of Emporia

It’s this stark, lonely, spectral Kansas landscape out here west of town—that’s somehow comforting and reassuring to me now in my retirement years.
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Like Burroughs up there in Lawrence, calm, cool and distant from frantic NYC, finding himself centered in a new way, a new artform, shotgun splatter art

Like Burroughs, here I am in this limestone old farmhouse, down from the BNSF tracks west of Emporia, Kansas where I grew up long ago