The Rhinoceros and The Regime

Posthuman Bodies on Stage and Screen

Authors

  • Alina Gabriela Mihalache University of Bucharest, Romania

Keywords:

posthumanism, performative body, postdramatic theatre, Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros

Abstract

Ever since its first representation on stage, Ionesco's play Rhinoceros became a mirror to the anxieties haunting the societies that it was held up to. Back in the 1960s, it would symbolize (Neo-)Fascism and Far-Right dangers in the Western countries, while subversively pointing at Communism and Far-Left ideologies in the Central-East European cultures. The text's versatility was highly praised by the literary and theatrical criticism, and allowed for its re-enactment in shows and films produced over the globe, in the most diverse social-political contexts. This study aims to revisit some of the first play stagings from the current perspective of post-theatre, pointing out how the early post-War productions are contributing to rewriting of the performative code in the language of posthumanism and post-drama.

Author Biography

Alina Gabriela Mihalache, University of Bucharest, Romania

ALINA GABRIELA MIHALACHE has graduated the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest (1998), has been awarded PhD in philology (2013), and authored the volume Eugen Ionescu / Eugène Ionesco. From surrealist theatre to postdramatic theatre (2016). She is currently a Lecturer PhD with the Center of Excellence in Study of Image, teaching a series of courses on theatre history and theory. She participated in numerous national and international conferences, colloquiums and workshops, with various essays regarding the Romanian literary and theatrical avant-garde in a European context, she published works in several scientific journals and in collective volumes. She wrote literary and theatre reviews for the cultural periodicals Romania literară, Observator cultural, Teatrul azi, aLtitudini.

Downloads

Published

2023-04-24

How to Cite

Mihalache, A. G. (2023). The Rhinoceros and The Regime: Posthuman Bodies on Stage and Screen. Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai - Dramatica, 68(1), 87–102. Retrieved from https://dramatica.ro/index.php/j/article/view/272

Issue

Vol. 68 No. 1 (2023): Corporeal Narratives in Performing and Visual Arts

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.