The Theater Department of Community High School presented “Rhinoceros”, Eugène Ionesco’s classic Theater of the Absurd play spoofing the rise of Fascism in mid-20th century Europe.
About the Production (from the program):
Welcome to the opening production of Community High School’s 2025-2026 theater season. We are about to take a wild ride through Eugène Ionesco’s acclaimed satire, Rhinoceros. But it is much more than just a wild ride. Ionesco, like his contemporaries Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and others wrote what became known as the Absurdist Theater (a name coined by theater scholar Martin Esslin) movement for European playhouses of the 1950s and 1960s. Rhinoceros remains one of its most well known works, theater that in light of world war and the rise of fascism, prominently lives as an example of a writer convinced “the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose.” Ionesco creates a world in which his protagonist, Berenger, fights to find his purpose in life and vainly tries to control it. He, like many Absurdist protagonists is “left feeling hopeless, bewildered, and anxious.”
But is it hopeless? Is not the act of writing an act of defiance? Ionesco, born in Romania (raised in France) returned to his country of birth at the start of World War II (1939), where he witnessed the Iron Curtain, a far-right paramilitary group that, while dressed in green, gripped Romania with anti- democratic, anti communist, anti-Semitic ideology. The Iron Curtain’s political violence engrained in Ionesco “a horror of ideological conformism.” Ionesco managed a travel visa and returned to France, experiencing the Nazi occupation while a resident of Marseilles. Rhinoceros attacks the Iron Curtain and Nazism as well as the French intelligentsia, embodied by Botard, who were members of the French Communist Party. Ionesco found the French Communist party held sympathies for Stalinism and its extreme political violence. No matter what form of fascism, Ionesco’s masterwork exposes it in pursuit of supporting individuality.
Such a grand play then has attracted great theater talent. Sir Laurence Olivier created the role of Berenger in London’s West End theater production in 1960, with Joan Plowright as Daisy. When the play opened at London’s Strand, Dame Maggie Smith portrayed Daisy. Jean was introduced in London by Duncan McCrae and on Broadway by Zero Mostel, who then appeared in the 1973 film opposite Gene Wilder’s Berenger. Tonight, another excellent cast tackles a grand, empirical question: one horn or two? Enjoy and please let us know. Please?
To see even more photos of this amazing production, click here.
Fall 2025 Theater Production of “Rhinoceros”
The Theater Department of Community High School presented “Rhinoceros”, Eugène Ionesco’s classic Theater of the Absurd play spoofing the rise of Fascism in mid-20th century Europe.
About the Production (from the program):
Welcome to the opening production of Community High School’s 2025-2026 theater season. We are about to take a wild ride through Eugène Ionesco’s acclaimed satire, Rhinoceros. But it is much more than just a wild ride. Ionesco, like his contemporaries Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet and others wrote what became known as the Absurdist Theater (a name coined by theater scholar Martin Esslin) movement for European playhouses of the 1950s and 1960s. Rhinoceros remains one of its most well known works, theater that in light of world war and the rise of fascism, prominently lives as an example of a writer convinced “the human situation is essentially absurd, devoid of purpose.” Ionesco creates a world in which his protagonist, Berenger, fights to find his purpose in life and vainly tries to control it. He, like many Absurdist protagonists is “left feeling hopeless, bewildered, and anxious.”
But is it hopeless? Is not the act of writing an act of defiance? Ionesco, born in Romania (raised in France) returned to his country of birth at the start of World War II (1939), where he witnessed the Iron Curtain, a far-right paramilitary group that, while dressed in green, gripped Romania with anti- democratic, anti communist, anti-Semitic ideology. The Iron Curtain’s political violence engrained in Ionesco “a horror of ideological conformism.” Ionesco managed a travel visa and returned to France, experiencing the Nazi occupation while a resident of Marseilles. Rhinoceros attacks the Iron Curtain and Nazism as well as the French intelligentsia, embodied by Botard, who were members of the French Communist Party. Ionesco found the French Communist party held sympathies for Stalinism and its extreme political violence. No matter what form of fascism, Ionesco’s masterwork exposes it in pursuit of supporting individuality.
Such a grand play then has attracted great theater talent. Sir Laurence Olivier created the role of Berenger in London’s West End theater production in 1960, with Joan Plowright as Daisy. When the play opened at London’s Strand, Dame Maggie Smith portrayed Daisy. Jean was introduced in London by Duncan McCrae and on Broadway by Zero Mostel, who then appeared in the 1973 film opposite Gene Wilder’s Berenger. Tonight, another excellent cast tackles a grand, empirical question: one horn or two? Enjoy and please let us know. Please?
To see even more photos of this amazing production, click here.