#ASIANIC OR AFRICAN RHINOCEROS FREE#

This staging of “Rhinoceros” capitalizes heavily on confusion. I think the beauty of the show is in how it captures that confusion and utilizes it to its advantage.” And I think that in our current state of the world, politics and the future are becoming more and more confusing for the average person. “But I think the thing that’s so special about it, and about all of Ionesco’s work, is how the absurdity makes the work very confusing. “I think that Rhinoceros is a very political play in a lot of ways, when you consider when it was written, and why,” said Tragash. Instead he found contemporary relevance in the swirling and confusing meaning of words. The message was that an investment in reality is necessary to prevent the spread of dangerous (in the opinion of the playwright Eugene Ionesco) ideology.ĭirector Jordan Tragash ’18 didn’t reference the specific ideologies that “Rhinoceros” targeted. Another character, Botard (Dariush Yazdanpanah ’19), is a Marxist caricature that also falls to the way of the rhino. Questioned about his friend turning into a rhinoceros, Jean (Andrew Dalton ’20) says, “Are you under the impression that our way of life is superior?” He shortly thereafter turns into a rhino. Many had cartoonish, exaggerated movements and patterns of speaking. The closer the characters were to becoming rhinos, the more stylized their acting became.

Characters transform into rhinoceroses after questioning the nature of morality, good and evil, or nature itself. The play is a criticism of the spread of postmodernism and Marxism (which are fundamentally different). Words and their meanings deteriorate in front of the audience, which is sometimes maddening and other times nauseating.

A significant portion of the play is dedicated to figuring whether the rhinos (or single rhino) was Asiatic or African. The characters of the play then diverge into a heated discussion about whether there were two rhinos, or if the two charges were made by the same rhino. A calm scene at a café is disrupted by a stampeding rhino. The play explores the spread of oppressive ideology in Paris using absurdism. But “seeing other South Asian queer people living and thriving and embracing their joy gave me the permission to do the same,” he said.Theater often speaks to political reality, but few plays examine both politics and reality more overtly than “Rhinoceros.” As if the text wasn’t confusing and disorienting enough, this Second Stage production uses lighting and sound that make the room feel like it’s spinning. “I felt shame to my community for being queer,” he said.

He had planned to just stop by but ended up staying for about five hours. There, he met an older South Asian queer person for the first time - a reminder that he did not have to feel “like the black sheep” of his community. Qazi, a 35-year-old transgender man, first attended the South Asian LGBTQ+ nonprofit Satrang’s family day picnic at Griffith Park a year and a half ago after seeing an Instagram post. Hundreds planned to dance to Bollywood songs, cheer South Asian drag kings and munch on biryani rice and samosas.

#ASIANIC OR AFRICAN RHINOCEROS FREE#

People need space just to be free and be themselves.”ĪP Qazi was beaming with excitement as he prepared for L.A.’s first South Asian Pride Night in late June. “In a time when there is anti-Asian hate and it feels like the whole world is crumbling … what’s more revolutionary politically than dancing, having a good time and loving one another?” said Crisman, a 36-year-old gay Korean American researcher and artist. While working at a mobile HIV testing van in the city, she was sexually and verbally harassed, she said.Įvents like the K-Pop Night are “liberating,” said Shu Mai, who also hosts Send Noodz, a n Asian American/Pacific Islander drag party, with fellow queen Bibi Discoteca. She said she rarely goes to West Hollywood, except for QT Nightlife and other queer Asian events. Miss Shu Mai, a Taiwanese American drag queen who hosted the K-Pop Night, recalled seeing white actors in yellowface - makeup that made them look East Asian in L.A.’s drag scene. In 2019, then-West Hollywood Mayor John Duran argued that he did not inappropriately touch a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles because “he’s a skinny Korean kid with pimples on his cheek.”Īsian American advocacy groups criticized Duran’s remark, with API Equality-LA pointing to the long history of discrimination against Asian men in gay communities such as West Hollywood, whose clubs “used to require three forms of photo identification from anyone they perceived as Asian.”ĭuran eventually resigned from his position as mayor, citing health reasons, after several other allegations of sexual harassment.

Asianic or african rhinoceros