Holding onto your humanity, against the herd

Arts & Culture

Holding onto your humanity, against the herd

Samantha Laine Perfas

Harvard Staff Writer

August 17, 2026

5 min read

A.R.T. kicks off season with ‘Rhinoceros,’ starring Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, and John Turturro

It’s Sunday morning, and everything seems normal in the small town — until a peculiar transformation happens: One by one, the townspeople turn into rhinoceroses.

So begins the first production of the American Repertory Theater’s 2026-2027 season, an adaptation based on Derek Prouse’s English translation of the Eugène Ionesco absurdist play “Rhinoceros,” which premiered in 1959. Directed by the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director Diane Paulus ’88, “Rhinoceros” features three Emmy Award-winning actors: Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, and John Turturro. The show opens Friday and runs through Sept. 27.

“It’s a serious play, but there’s something very childlike about it,” said Giamatti, known for his Golden Globe-winning role in “The Holdovers” and HBO’s SAG-winning “Too Big to Fail.” He plays the pompous, bourgeois character Jean, one of the first residents to transform. “The more bizarre and funnier it is, almost the more serious it becomes in a strange way,” he said.

The premise of the play is slightly ridiculous. Yet it allows the audience to explore what it means to be human in a world that values conformity. That theme attracted Turturro, the award-winning actor, writer, and director, because of how applicable it is today, he said. He plays the lead role of Berenger, who must decide whether to follow the crowd or remain true to his values.

“There are certain essential themes in literature or in the world that just recycle,” he noted. In “Rhinoceros,” Turturro sees how the characters become afraid of their differences — so much so they are willing to accept the flawed logic that eventually leads to “barbaric” behaviors. “[What starts as] a small discrepancy between people becomes this big, giant chasm,” he said.

Tony Award-winner Paulus said that when Ionesco wrote the play, he used metaphor to speak to his experience growing up in Romania and witnessing the Iron Guard, seeing the rise of Nazism in France, and then watching the French intellectual left embrace Joseph Stalin. Paulus believes the story will resonate with modern audiences.

“This play allows us space to look at things that are going to feel like they’re ripped out of the headlines, and yet we’re talking about rhinoceroses taking over a little, small town.”Diane Paulus

“This play allows us space to look at things that are going to feel like they’re ripped out of the headlines, and yet we’re talking about rhinoceroses taking over a little, small town,” she said. “It allows us to hear the play in a timeless way and also allows us to relate to it very personally.”

When Maslany — known for her roles in the television shows “Orphan Black,” “She-Hulk,” and “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” — read the play for the first time, she was floored.

“I read it in one sitting and just kind of felt bowled over by it. It really hit me in this incredibly emotional way,” she said. She plays the “confusing and complicated” character Daisy, an office receptionist and Berenger’s romantic interest. “It was really funny and felt like it couldn’t have been more prescient.”

Giamatti said the play raises fundamental questions about humanity amid the rise of social media and artificial intelligence.

“What makes you a human being, what makes you an individual?” Giamatti said. “[Berenger is] the one guy who’s fighting to be an individual, and he’s a wreck. And what makes him human is the fact that he’s a wreck.”

The cast also includes Harriett D. Foy, Peter Francis James, Kristine Nielsen, Alex Ross, and Clay Singer, with Britt Faulkner, David Mason, Amelia Sipkin,and Scott Stangland as understudies. Everyone has worked together to give the historic play new life.

“The way that [Turturro] leads is [by] facilitating what’s beautiful about every performer that’s in the space,” Maslany said. “He sees something, and he’s like, ‘Oh yes! Let’s invite that more into the show. Let’s, in fact, highlight it and make it a thing.’ It’s so infinitely generous.”

“Rhinoceros” is Paulus’s last directing project at the Loeb Drama Center before the A.R.T. moves to its new home in Allston, the Goel Center for Creativity & Performance.

“It’s your dream as a director to be working with actors like this cast, who bring the combination of craft and attention and rigor with utter playfulness and creativity and spontaneity,” she said. “It’s been an incredible collaboration in discovering what this is [and what] will be unique to our production.”

As for the actual mechanics of transforming into a rhinoceros on stage? Well, the cast says you’ll have to see it for yourself.

“You have to buy a ticket,” said Giamatti, who added he has always loved stories about people “unlacing and letting their animal out.” He’s excited to give it a try himself.

“It’s fun, it’s interesting,” he said. “Just as an acting thing, it’s a challenge.”

For more information and to buy tickets, visit the A.R.T. website.