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“I feel very passionate that this play can be resonant for many, many people,” said director Diane Paulus. “You can really put the quest of what does it mean to hold onto your individuality or originality—to stand aside from the crowd—into many, many contexts.”

“I remember it was on our required list in college at Howard University and I read it,” said Harriett D. “But coming back to it and reading again, I was like, wow, this is so powerful.”

“To me, it’s the basic human dilemma of, are you an individual or do you join a group? Like, how do you live in the world?” [said actor Paul Giamatti.] “Is it better to be a rhinoceros or a person?”

“It’s a kind of black comedy,” Paul Giamatti explained. “It’s scary and funny at the same time. Those two things are awful close together, humor and terror.”

“I feel so energized by what is going on in the world,” [Kristine Nielsen] told the Boston Herald. “It’s so crazy right now and we have to be as active as we can in making the world a better place.”

The A.R.T. production arrives at a moment when public life feels increasingly defined by ideological polarization, competing realities, technological upheaval, and anxieties about what it means to remain fully human.

When John Turturro approached American Repertory Theater artistic director Diane Paulus about collaborating on a production of Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”…Paulus was immediately intrigued.

“These doppelgänger stories capture the ways in which the human capacity for self-discovery is such a gift and such a weapon all in one,” [playwright Jen Silverman says]. “There’s always the question of, ‘Do I know who I am, and what happens when I discover something about myself I didn’t know? In many ways, that is Nina’s trajectory.””