Costume & Stage Design · 2015
Rhinoceros
Eugène Ionesco · Iran · 2015
Costume & Stage Designer: Ghazal Mojtahedi
About Eugène Ionesco
Romanian-French playwright (1909–1994) and a founding figure of the Theatre of the Absurd. Ionesco's work dismantles rational communication and social convention through dark comedy and surreal imagery — exposing the mechanisms of conformity, mass hysteria, and the loss of individual identity.
About the Play
In a small provincial town, people begin transforming into rhinoceroses one by one. The protagonist Bérenger watches as friends, colleagues, and loved ones succumb to the collective stampede — until he alone remains human. A masterwork of political allegory, widely read as a portrait of fascism, totalitarianism, and the terrifying ease with which individuals abandon reason to join the herd.
Design Approach
The costume and stage design sought to physicalize the play's central transformation — using texture, color, and silhouette to chart the gradual dehumanization of characters as they become part of the herd. The design balanced the play's darkly comic tone with its underlying menace, creating a visual world that felt ordinary enough to be believable and strange enough to be deeply unsettling.
Production Photography · Click to zoom
