The sonorous void: Acoustic stages and sound play in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros

Abstract

Abstract Among the many conflicts pervading Eugene Ionesco’s influential play Rhinoceros (1961) one stands out as a dominant means to spring the story forward. It is not a subtle dramatic device, and yet it has not gotten much attention from critics and theorists. In this particular play, more so than elsewhere in Ionesco’s oeuvre and in the theatre of the absurd in general, there is an insistence on creating a conflict between what one sees, hears and imagines. Several oscillations and leaps that occur between exterior and interior spaces highlight this narrative conflict. The sounds and noises specified by the didascalia help the reader navigate the story while occasionally and playfully taking the reader completely out of the diegetic space. New, imaginary acoustic spaces and stages emerge and fill the void around the actual stage, as at the centre of it all the main character, Bérenger, functions as a kind of aural shape-shifter, capable of moving between different levels of interiority and exteriority through sound. The purpose of this article then is to explore the role of sound and sound directions in Rhinoceros and to establish that a new type of space – an imaginary acoustic space – is created. The article also indexes the elements of play and playfulness that help generate a variety of diegetical and extradiegetical spaces, from among which the aural component emerges as a crucial means to support the narrative.