The Full Length Plays

Play : Eugene Ionesco
Translation : Jahurul Haque
Direction : Kazi Toufikul Islam Emon

Stage : Proscenium

Duration : 1 hr 30 mins

Premier Show: 13 October, 2003, Monday, Dr. Nilima Ibrahim Auditorium, Bangladesh Mahila Samity, Bailey Road, Dhaka

* This play was partially funded by ‘Theater Development Project’ of Bangladesh Group Theater Foundation and Bengal Foundation.

French-Romanian dramatist Eugene Ionesco(1912-1993), in his absurd play ‘The Rhinoceros’, written in 1959, wanted to de-mask the ‘Totalitarian’ social system in France held by Germany during the second world war. Ionesco himself has declared this play as an anti-Nazi play. The central character of the play, Berenger, is a wishful, drunk and tardy person. Jean, another major character of the play is just the opposite – formal, rational, confident, socially successful. When everyone is joining the Rhinoceros queue, we see how Berenger stands alone against the metamorphosis. Daisy, who Berenger loved, finally joins the Rhinoceros and Berenger asks himself agonizingly, whether he should remain human or join the league. A human Berenger becomes a monstrous existence among the league of Rhinoceros around. ‘The Rhinoceros’ has used all well known methods of absurd drama in this play- description of scattered and strange events, nonsense conversations and recognizable characters. Sometimes the story flow seems surrealistic and sometimes without rationality. But, at the end, the most rational persons happen to become rhinoceros! Berenger doesn’t surrender, because he is not conventionally rational. Berenger is the alienated one in the society who keeps struggling for his survival despite all challenges nature throws upon him.
Though Eugene Ionesco is not as popular as Samuel Beckett for writing Absurd plays in our country, he is not less known to the theater-lovers indeed. Some of his plays like ‘The Bald Soprano’, ‘The lesson’ and ‘The chairs’ had been staged in Bangladesh Television program ‘Bishwa Natak(World drama)’ anchored by Syed Ahmed. Later, some of these plays have been staged in the theater too. Prachyanat was the first theater group to stage ‘The Rhinoceros’ in Bangladesh.

It was in the 1950’s.
The second decade had already experienced world war in the twentieth century. It came again in 1939. These two wars were severe attacks on society. Men became crippled not only in physique, but also in mind. The mutual relationships got cracked between. People started to get paranoid of their own identity. Ultimately deteriorating frustration and gloominess grasped life. Absurd play rose during that time. Characters in Absurd plays are just mirror-reflected symbols that drive the play forward along with frustration, emptiness and feeling of detachment.
In Ionesco’s ‘The Rhinoceros’, Protagonist Berenger sees that people are losing individuality and following the wave. They are not thinking otherwise and Berenger alone is rebelling against. Berenger’s friend Jean holds some universal slogans and ideas and wants to lead a comfortable life. He does not hesitate about it, and we hear him say – “I never dream ! Every thought is in my hand”. He is never confused. He never fosters a hesitating mind. On the other side, Berenger is conscious about the meaninglessness of life. He seeks for freedom from this unbearable meaninglessness. Jean becomes a rhinoceros right before Berenger’s eyes. Berenger cannot stop him despite trying. He becomes witness to his colleagues transforming into rhinoceros one after another. When he dreams of starting everything from scratch with beloved Daisy, she becomes a rhino too. Berenger stands in a heroic position with herds of big, weird and dangerous rhinoceros around.
We can see political opinions in this play. The world is controlled just by logics deprived of humanity, where authorities are sinister. It’s an image of lifeless, mechanical, extreme bourgeois life. Berenger’s rebellion here is more Tragicomic than Heroic. In present days, scientific numeration or abstraction of political and social theories has made human existence more troublesome. No individual can now fulfill his soul. Most of the people have chosen consumer life and have been seeking relief from the suffering resorting themselves into reasoning. No one tends to think objectively. Rather, they want to see everything from a funny subjective point of view.
In ‘The Rhinoceros’, Ionesco looked for abstract reality in between contradiction and absurdity. He wanted to present the depth of mind through a tragic fence. Ionesco was concerned how inhumanity was swallowing the whole society. To reveal it, he showed the transformation of humans into rhinoceros. There is depreciation, frustration, loneliness, sickness, neurosis around. As a result, the downfall is also in evolution. All the sacredness, meaning has been blown away because of the gradual decay. An overwhelming frustration is grasping in. Loneliness echoes in the loner mind, a ‘Rhinoceric’ event. The deadly truth is that everyone has a savage, primitive self in his unconscious. It can be exposed anytime. And we can become Rhinoceros. Human beings create their individuality through freedom of thought and their individuality finds the path and they have to move forward taking the path for granted. The lack of consciousness to differentiate between good and bad, lack of traditional values sometimes makes it appear that men have reached the extreme level of their existence, where there is no individuality of their own. They are losing their name; they are standing out of history in a frozen time. So, will we take this continuous transition for granted? Will we join the flock of sheep abandoning everything?
As director I have wanted to show the insensibility of life, the incoherence, the astounding image where everyone runs following the way the majority goes. It is a tale where no one understands each other– ‘In every house in this concrete city, every person seems to be a single separated island’. At a point of continuous detachment, the rooms have become cells in jail. Nothing touches anyone anymore. We see that the conversation between the scholar and the old man matches with Jean and Berenger’s conversation at another table, on a different subject matter. Our everyday words are just similarly boring, tiresome, meaningless and we go on uttering them day after day. Listeners are interested in knowing the solution, rather than knowing the problem. What can a logician do but present the problem accurately? If we could realize ‘the sense of futility’, we would walk the road holding each other. We would love each other madly. When men fall in a situation where they have nothing in front or behind, nor beside or above, what else can they want to do but make themselves happy together?
When man’s hopes, expectations, dreams shatter apart; when man reaches the point between existence and non-existence after experiencing consecutive deceptions, when there remains nothing for oneself, then in this cruel world, the soul wants to scream out like Berenger – ‘I’ll take on the whole of them! I will put up a fight against a lot of them. The whole lot of them! I am the last man left and I am staying that way until the end. I am not capitulating’.

Md. Abeed Hossain Farhan (Jean)

Monirul Islam Rubel (Berenger) 

Saiful Islam Jarnel (The Grocer)

Farzana Kabir Khan (The Grocer’s Wife) 

Heera Chowdhury (Logician)

Enamul Haque (The Old Gentleman)

Reetu Sattar (The Housewife)

Ehsan Chowdhury (The Cafe Proprietor)

Shahriar Shaon (The Waiter)

Shatabdi Wadud (Mr. Papillon)

Meheli Rose (Daisy)

Shahriar Ferdous Shazeeb (Dudard)

Jagonmoy Paul (Botard) 

Assistance in Direction and Music : Rahul Ananda

Assistant to Director : Amirul Rajiv 

Set and Light : Md. Shaiful Islam

Choreography : Snata Shahrin 

Props : Masihuddoulah Azad

Makeup : Md. Ali Babul 

Poster and Leaflet : Md. Shaiful Islam

Stage Manager : Md. Rafiqul Islam

Production Manager : Shatabdi Wadud