Pachyderm: The Ionesco Project

Saint Paul Conservatory J-Term 2026 presents Pachyderm: The Ionesco Project

Pachyderm: The Ionesco Project invites audiences into the surreal, comic, and unsettling world of Eugène Ionesco, one of the founding voices of the Theatre of the Absurd. Best known for his groundbreaking play Rhinoceros, Ionesco used wild imagery, startling humor, and illogical situations to explore conformity, alienation, and the fragility of human identity. In this devised performance, created in part by SPCPA's Avant-Garde Theater Studies class, will take these themes off the page and into the body, translating Ionesco’s chaotic energy into movement and voice, though a collaborative devised approach..

Directed by Kenzi Allen, Pachyderm fuses physical theater techniques with Ionesco’s signature blend of the hilarious and the haunting. Expect a stage alive with unexpected imagery, fragmented dialogue, and a constant push-and-pull between comedy and menace. By weaving together material from Rhinoceros with echoes of Ionesco’s other plays, the piece becomes both a tribute and a reimagining—an absurdist playground where elephants in the room become impossible to ignore. Strange, witty, and thought-provoking, this devised exploration asks its cast and its audience to consider what happens when logic collapses, language fails, and the herd begins to march.