This year's Rhinoceros Theater Festival will be based solely around the work of Eugene Ionesco, particularly his 1959 play, Rhinoceros, to be staged in a full production by Curious Theatre Branch co-founder Beau O'Reilly, with six weeks of new theatrical work by invited artists and companies that will engage with and reconsider this elusive writer of Absurdist theater.
Each year, Curious Theatre Branch curates and produces the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, which provides production and exhibition opportunities to hundreds of artists, drawing thousands in attendance each year. The longest-running multi-arts fringe festival in Chicago, the Rhino features works in theater and performance from Chicago companies and national artists alike.
First organized over 25 years ago in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, the Rhino is unique among national fringe festivals in that artists are never charged a fee to participate, and each year our programs are individually curated rather than selected on a lottery basis.