The Rhinoceros Theater Festival is billed as “Chicago’s longest running fringe festival,” but last year’s edition took a different tack from the 27 before it. Or seemed to, anyway. Where its predecessors appeared to follow the familiar fringe-fest pattern of ignoring patterns, the 2016 fest had a clear curatorial concept: Coartistic directors Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus shaped it around Rhinoceros, the black comedy by Eugene Ionesco that, interestingly enough, didn’t inspire Rhinofest’s name. (Salvador Dalí’s rhinos did.) Magnus and O’Reilly’s own company, Curious Theatre Branch, staged Ionesco’s tale of townsfolk transformed into odd-toed ungulates, and other artists contributed work that riffed on its themes.
Having spent the last few days watching nine of this year’s 29 entries, I’ve got a suggestion. Let’s call it an annual tribal convocation. A sort of Grabowski Burning Man. Because there’s no doubt but that the whole event is suffused with a sense of community. There are second-, third-, and (if you count a short film called This Is a Movie of a Report I Am Making to the 3rd Grade) fourth-generation Rhino bloodlines in evidence here. Some of the more experimental local storefront luminaries lend their creativity and support. Even the relative newcomers come attended by their followers. This is one of those events where audience members don’t necessarily stand up and leave when the show’s over: everybody’s waiting for the actors to come out and say hi.
You’re His Child (Sat 9 PM), a tender family chronicle done solo by Emmy Bean, focusing on her gospel-singing great-grandfather, Henry, and appealing mainly for the opportunities it provides to hear Emmy sing.
Through 2/26: Wed-Fri 7 and 9 PM; Sat 2, 5, 7, 9, and 10:30 PM; Sun 2, 5, and 7 PM; Mon 7 and 9 PM Prop Thtr 3502 N. Elstonrhinofest.com $12 online in advance, $15 or pay what you can at the door
