Sheer Madness

FRI 11/21

If the timing of the E.M.U. Theatre’s And Much of Madness, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, seems off by a month, simply chalk it up to integrity. “We would have sold more tickets had we done it in October,” admits director Todd Schwartz, “but it simply wasn’t ready. Commercial concerns are not an E.M.U. priority.”Schwartz isn’t saying he doesn’t care if people show up. The five-year-old Lawrence company has a following, he says. “A few times, we’ve had more people onstage than in the audience. But our audiences are growing.”

And Much of Madness combines parts of Poe’s short stories and poems with work from local writers. The result is an original play that Schwartz says “involves a talk show-style character and a fictional experimental theater group called the Entropy Theatre Company that, like E.M.U., does avant-garde work.”

The collective’s effort to meld stories such as “The Raven” and “The Conqueror Worm” into a show ripe for audiences in 2003, Schwartz says, “combines the classic Poe literature with the modern horror and science-fiction genre and adds a Monty Pythonesque irreverence.”

Performances are at 8:30 p.m. Fridays through Sundays, concluding December 9, in the Ecumenical Christian Ministries building, 1204 Oread in Lawrence. For information, call 785-760-4772.— Steve Walker

Exodust Tonight

Kansas history unfolds.

11/21-11/23

Here’s a new motto for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce: “Kansas — It beats the Reconstruction-era South.” That’s what the former slaves were thinking when they saw their new digs, just northwest of Hays.When they settled Nicodemus in the 1870s, the so-called Exodusters were forced to burrow into the ground for shelter. Today, Nicodemus remains the oldest continuously occupied town west of the Mississippi settled by African-Americans. Set in 1898, Flyin’ West tells the story of the African-American, female pioneers who settled the land made available by the Homestead Act. Performances start at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday at the Kansas City, Kansas, Community College (7250 State Avenue). For tickets, call 913-288-7134.— Michael Vennard