Ionesco’s Rhinoceros on Stage at UVA Wise

This fall, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise (UVA Wise) Theater Division stages Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” an absurd and hilarious play hailed by The New York Times as, “An allegory for our times.” Performances will run November 13th-15th at 7 p.m. and November 16th at 2 p.m. on the UVA Wise campus in the Gilliam Center for the Arts Black Box Theater. Tickets are $5 for the public, or free with presentation of UVA Wise ID. Through partnership with the Pro-Art Association, Pro-Art season ticket holders are also free to attend. The Box Office opens one hour prior to the start of each performance.

The sublime is confused with the ridiculous in this savage commentary on the human condition, a staple of every theatre classroom and 20th century drama. A small town is besieged by one roaring citizen who becomes a rhinoceros and proceeds to trample on the social order. As more citizens are transformed into rhinoceroses, the trampling becomes overwhelming, and more and more citizens become rhinoceroses. One sane man, Berenger, remains, unable to change his form and identity. Theatergoers are in for an evening the New York Post calls, "strange, disturbing and arresting.”

The UVA Wise Theater Division is devoted to theater as a unified art form that blurs the lines between visual-art, story and music by fusing performance, design and engineering in a single, meaningful experience. Find more information about the program at uvawise.edu.

The mission of Pro-Art is to advance the civic and cultural understandings achieved uniquely through the arts, by presenting a diverse range of high-quality artists and arts education programming, making them broadly accessible to the communities Pro-Art serves. For more information about planned performances or to purchase season tickets, please visit proartva.org.