Rhinoceros
by Eugène Ionesco
Translated by Martin Crimp
Produced by Kate Bredeson (director)
and Caitlin Cisek (scenographer)
Reed College Theatre ONLINE
Thank you for joining us for Rhinoceros. While the show is no longer available online, you can enjoy the rest of the resources on this site and stay tuned for upcoming work from Reed Theatre.
Bérenger finds himself increasingly alone as his friends, work colleagues, and neighbors one by one turn into rhinoceroses. Set in a small French town, Eugène Ionesco’s play takes a classic form to tell his jarring story of accumulation. Through the lens of the pandemic and Revolution of 2020, immigrant Ionesco’s tale speaks to a variety of spreads, including fascism, white supremacy, and viral contagion. Reed Theatre shares this story with you as a serial that will unfold over three weeks, itself mirroring the accumulation narrative of the play. In the moment of its first production, 1960, Rhinoceros was a dazzling display of what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd—seventy years later, and through Martin Crimp’s fresh translation, Ionesco’s warning speaks louder than ever.
Reed Theatre’s Fall 2020 production of Rhinoceros is presented as a serial, with each of the three acts released over three weeks in November 2020. You can experience each act as it is released, or all at once after the final act is released. The release dates are:
Launch Party
Come in Costume. October 30, 7-8pm
Act I. A podcast with images*
Release date November 6.
Act II. A graphic novel on the screen*
Release date November 14.
Act III. A filmed Zoom play*
Release date November 20
[content warning for Act III: brief moment of domestic violence]
Rhinoceros is presented in collaboration with SACD Paris and Judy Daish and Associates in the UK.
Reed Theatre acknowledges that our performing arts building and campus rests on the traditional and unceded lands of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other indigenous peoples. We have members of our company in Henderson, Nevada on Southern Paiute land, and in Boston, Massachusetts on Nipmuc and Musketaquid land. We offer this acknowledgement with the goal of honoring those to whom this land belongs, and to raise awareness about colonization and the histories of genocide and theft of indigenous peoples. We are on stolen land.