Dear Editor,
Prompted by a dream I had the other night, I was reminded of what was referred to as “Theatre Of The Absurd” during the post-World War II era and on through the 1960’s. Characterized by trite and commonplace dialogue, meaningless platitudes and generalized blather costumed as profundity, these plays, as written by primarily European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ianesco, Jean Genet and others, were a reaction to the breakdown of social and political life as seen in rising crime rates and corrupt political processes. But back to my dream….
So there I was —in my dream— sitting in a darkened movie theatre watching the same old familiar actors recite their same old familiar lines when I realized that this was also a re-run of something I had seen before. There they all were, lined up like Penguins and dressed identically in their white tropical Guayabera uniforms with one frighteningly intoning, “We will continue to borrow, we will continue to spend,” while another weighs in with “Not guilty, your Honor!”
In my dream even Nixon proclaims, “I am not a crook!” while Curtis Mayfield tells us, “If there’s a hell down below, we’re all gonna go!”
Whew…glad it was only a dream….
Russell Czarnecki
