They would kill you with the best of consciences.”Ī post-war leader of the Theatre of the Absurd movement, Ionesco profoundly altered the face of modern drama, with more than twenty plays, as well as stories, memoirs, theoretical essays and a novel. They have that mixture of candor and ferocity. “I don’t know if you have noticed it,” the playwright said of his Rhinoceros, “but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters-rhinos, for example. It traces and points out the different stages of this phenomenon as a caution that one must reject joining the herd and always hold on to their individual humanity.” Ultimately, a warning about how gradually authoritarian and totalitarian mindsets can infiltrate, grow, transform and conquer entire communities-even the whole world. “I think of it as Kafka meets Monty Python. “The play is a wild, hilarious farce-with a lot of bite,” says Cienfuegos. The highly regarded Pacific Resident Theatre (PRT) presents this classic in Derek Prouse’s translation, directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, who recently helmed the award-winning Dutch Masters. Ionesco had re-established himself in Paris after the war, so his play could well be seen as an indictment of French collaborationists in the notorious pro-fascist Vichy régime. His most popular full-length play, Rhinoceros, dating from 1959, explores how one by one the citizens of a small provincial French town shed their civilized façade and become destructive, untamed stampeding animals. Playwright Eugene Ionesco, born in Romania in 1909, witnessed just that in his native country, which entered the fascist camp led by the hateful Iron Guard in the lead-up to World War II.

VENICE, Calif.-We all know people, don’t we-relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors-who seemingly out of nowhere molt their cultured, tolerant liberal skins and turn into xenophobic, ugly racist patriotic chauvinists. Kendrah McKay and Keith Stevenson | Vitor Martins

Les rhinoceros eugene ionesco