Rhinos Rock Vermont
A Prancing & Potent Stage Show in the East Thetford Pavillion
Updated September 18, 2024
Note: This show plays for one more weekend, Thursday–Saturday, Sept 19–21 at 7:00 p.m. and a matinees on Sunday, September 22 at 2:30 p.m.
East Thetford, VT — Why here? Why now? Why rhinoceroses in small-town Vermont? Why Rhinocéros, an absurdist play written by Eugene Ionesco in 1959?
Artist/Director Kate Willard of Sharon, Vermont, fresh off a full-time stint directing summer theatre on Lake Champlain, preceded by two years of physical theatre, body movement, puppeteering, and directorial learning at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, helped me understand.
This show in this space is Willard’s way of creating “site specific theatre” to expose local community members to a part of itself many have never seen, like the 1930’s era Pavilion building across from Cedar Circle Farm on Pavillion Road in East Thetford. Coupled with the theme of the show, Rhinocéros, set in a small town in France, the parallels are strong. Ionesco’s work reveals a small-town community to itself and the world. The lurking power of illogic, conformity, philosophy, and the mob mentality demonstrate how a singularly inane notion can take root and undo life itself. Much like unveiling the historic Pavilion as a newly-discovered space, Willard’s version of Rhinocéros exposes our closest selves to, surprisingly, us.
Yet, it’s the community here that has brought this show to East Thetford. Its members pulled together in the form of the Parish Players, with benefactors willing to underwrite and support audaciously intense theatre in the heart of a small Vermont village. The non-traditional space further affords Willard the ability to develop art in a space that would otherwise need a considerable budget to build within a traditional theater. Watch out. We’re in for a rollercoaster of a ride that will linger and entertain even as it makes us question our very selves.
With upbeat music and dance, Willard transforms this dramatic production into a stage show of unparalleled energy and might that rocks with energy. Her use and choice of music and puppetry conjures vaudevillian verve, burlesque caricaturization of people as rhinoceroses, and that old-timey dancing, prancing, uplifting spirit that makes your heart skip as you hang onto your seat. The whimsy belies the absurdity that lurks, always, just beneath the surface until it explodes in monstrous frenzy. It is this diametric opposition and tension that haunts even as it entertains.
Ionesco’s intent when writing Rhinoceros was to point out the rise of pre-World War II fascism. Mobs loomed large. Back in the 1930’s, war emerged. Towns large and small were caught up in the initial joy of a movement. It began as beautiful. Then, suddenly, it turned dark. Not unlike then, today we hear similar messages purveying similar notions on the national and international stage.
Willard, with her rendition of Rhinocéros, brings intimate beauty to the stage. The set, the lighting, the multitudes of rhinoceroses—masked and unmasked— storm the stage and our lives with a message too potent to forget. A giant pachyderm in East Thetford parades across the Pavilion floor. For that alone, this show is worth the price of admission. Yet the scintillating music, the strong acting, the dynamically coordinated body movement that unify each act, the sway of the mob, the power of an esthetic turned to evil, and the undoing of a town, perhaps of the world, takes this show beyond the local. It challenges what we know of theatre—and of life.
Some have already called this show “urgent and absurdly timely.” That’s from a recent Strafford list serve posting by Jim Schley.
The actors exude a collective choreographic charm and crescendo that carries this show buoyantly along. The intermission was an interlude that gave me time to muse about what had just happened on stage—and to me. Like a rhino’s tusk might suddenly grow from my forehead, or my imagining of a thick-skinned beast trampling a cornfield just across the street, I felt unnerved. My emotions in conflict, the thematic thrust of the show laid itself bare upon my psyche, forcing me to question its penetrating intent. The second act drove its bright arrow of darkness home with a lighthearted spirit that turned myth into reality and folly into a force that could topple buildings.
For puppets and pachyderms in the Pavilion, for rhinoceroses large and small, for fun and frolic, and to watch tusks appear on the masked foreheads of small town community members, I hope you’ll experience Rhinoceros in its latest incarnation. The realization of how a beautiful notion can infect the human spirit as a seemingly benign yet invidious dynamic has left me reeling. From farm and field to a stage built within a singularly shimmering structure, is this play timely? Absolutely. Urgent? Most definitely. Schley’s message couldn’t be more relevant. And Willard’s directorial brilliance cannot be understated.
Brava to cast, crew, and community for pulling this one off in high theatrical style!
RHINOCÉROS
Written by Eugéne Ionesco / Translated by Derek Prouse
Director: Kate Willard / Producer: Greg LeBlanc
Choreography: Ashley Mello / Puppets & masks: The Paige family / Costumes: Martie Betts
Cast: Becky Bailey, Sam Clifton, Ashley Mello, Nicole Moreno Gaines, Kyle Huck, Greg LeBlanc, Phil Noble, Richard Noble, Rob O’Leary, Michele Perkins, Jim Schley, Noor Taher
Audience recommendation: For teens and adults, due to potentially scary scenes
Performance Dates: Friday and Saturday, September 13–14, and Thursday–Saturday, Sept 19–21 at 7:00 p.m. Matinees on Sundays, September 15 and 22 at 2:30 p.m.
EAST THETFORD PAVILION, 140 Pavilion Road, East Thetford VT 05043
Tickets: Reserve by phone at (802) 785-4344, email at: reservations@parishplayers.org or online at: www.parishplayers.org
Dave Celone writes from Sharon, Vermont. He is vice president of alumni relation and development at Vermont Law & Graduate School, the school of law and policy that serves the public interest and the nation’s needs for smart, compassionate, and passionate law and policy changemakers who represent clients and communities to keep our planet alive and well.