Rhinoceros

When Eugene Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros, in the 1950s, he was looking at how a community could metamorphosize into masses of rhinoceroses. He said of the ‘rhinoceritis' epidemic: “a new plague of modern times, a strange disease that thrives in different forms; automatic systematized thinking, the idolization of ideologies screens the mind from reality, perverts our understanding and makes us blind.”

​​​The play follows a small town where residents gradually turn into rhinoceroses, leaving one person fighting to keep his humanity. It is seen as an allegory on autocracy, conformity, and individual integrity.