Dancing Rhinos and Tutting for Ionesco

Having seen so many snippets from Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" looking like Commedia Del Art performances, I wondered if something was missing. Was Ionesco's Rhino simply a device of sledge-hammer fun or even as simply an absurd device for a kind of irreverent lampooning of some political movement? I took Ionesco's notion that it is really ourselves and our predisposition to frame our reality with the heard! I tried to apply this in a process of creating a work that would stand alone in an essentially tunnel-visioned multi-universe where untruths and semantic proclamations are seen as paradigms of reality. So getting rid of the unessential became my paramount concern. I am convinced this play has more associated with Surrealism than Commedia Del Art or even Absurdism!

A dancing rhino in Eugenio Ionesco's RHINOCEROS presented by DTC in 2026

Absurd as the central premises of Rhinoceros might be, I would argue the play is not part of the Absurdist repertoire. It was written later than most Absurdist works. It contains a passion that is only evident in the details and such passion is not part of the Absurdist canon. Like the later Pinter, Ionesco seems to have evolved from a constant irritation about human beings and their latent absurdity. Yet this does not mean his work is absurd.

Anti-Culture / Anti-Art

Apart from the central character of Berenger, the characters in Rhinoceros are largely totally self-obsessed and easily persuaded. The Logician thinks he knows everything. Berenger's friend Jean is obsessed with appearances while envious of Berenger's lack of external concerns. Daisy is drawn to the comfort of group solidarity and relationship connection while feeling a strong sense of her own personal significance! Characters gravitate to the draw of cultural heard mentality. What is right for the whole is right for the individual; whether it be religion, world views of various kinds or simply historical authority and what-is!

Ionesco used the rhinoceros as a symbol. It is simply that-which-takes-over! The non-thinking proponent of the every-day reality of repetitive nothingness is an easy victim of that-which-takes-over! The smug feeling of not needing connection to the past or to history provides easy pickings for that-which-takes-over. The anti cultural rhino provides a space for the homeless mind. Seeming success of capitalist economics provides the very foundation for the magnetic fields of disassociation and the fascination for the object of one's fears to manifest as the saviour! The ugly is beautiful; the repressive is release; one's success is failure; otherness is relationship; worth is worthless ... reaction to violence is violence; perpetration of violence is peace ... The rhinoceros in the room is within our very psyche as 21st century humans devolve into cartoon figures created on screens and in comic books ... What we once might have thought of as absurd from our medieval forebears and their strange and absurd behaviours is probably nothing compared to the total insanity of the twentieth and twenty-first century experiences!

Ionesco's play is then both anti-culture and anti-art. While he described some of his previous work as anti-play, Rhinoceros is both anti-culture and anti-art. It uses forms that defy the structures of theatre as art. It also posits a premiss that culture is a fragile and an ultimately oppressive deal. The price one pays for attempting to stand outside this overwhelming edifice is isolation and self-doubt. It suggests there is no way out of this trap and that one can only trust in one's own sense of purpose and personal foundation; there is nothing else. All else is absurd and ultimately destructive as evidenced in the history of the world!

Tutting and Dancing

Tutting is a dance form based on street dance and youthful revolt. Its repetitive and requires quite difficult arm and wrist actions making it perfect of exemplifying the struggle of everyday existence and its denial of any larger surrounding universe. We use tutting in our production to illustrate emotional and contradictory feelings within the workers from the office. It also becomes a motif that is counter to the highly visual elements of the comical rhinos that infest the world of work and existence in this small village. Much of the play is a kind of dance with a form that is beyond the understanding of the participants. It is a kind of gravitation to ultimate abdication; a personal abdication that is beyond any of the character's comprehension ... except for the constantly dissatisfied Berenger ...

While dialogue seems to make sense, the tutting and physical actions run counter to the narrative in ways that create contradictory tensions ... at least that is the idea.

Anyway, whatever I say about our production means nothing! The audience will probably see something completely different. But what audiences will not see is a straight comedy production for laughs! The work is closer to Surrealism and Symbolism than classic Absurdism! And it isn't part of a meaningless universe! Rather it realises how people devoid of meaning, as in the the homeless mind of todays world, are vulnerable to that-which-takes-over.

So I wonder who among the audience will find themselves akin to Berenger and who seek the relationships espoused by Daisy!

RHINOCEROS by Eugene Ionesco and translated by Derek Prouse 18 - 25 April 2026

Tickets here:

https://events.humanitix.com/rhinoceros-cnbc99wn