February Theatre Preview

Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994) was labeled an absurdist playwright. One can imagine Ionesco responding, “You want absurd? Try real life.” Pitt’s Department of Theatre Arts is staging his Rhinoceros, in which the perfectly civilized inhabitants of a small town mutate one by one into snorting, stampeding rhinoceroses. If you had read the play in school, you were taught that it’s an allegory about conformity, reflecting the 20^th-century events that turned masses of people into Nazis, Fascists, or fierce partisans of other ideologies. The interpretation rings true, but seeing Rhinoceros performed live is an experience that goes beyond finding a meaning in the text.