Eugene Ionesco was born Nov. 26, 1909, in Slatina, Romania, and died March 28, 1994, in Paris, France. He studied in Bucharest and Paris, where he lived from 1945. His first one-act antiplay, The Bald Soprano (1950), inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. He followed it with other one-act plays in which illogical events create an atmosphere both comic and grotesque, including The Lesson (1951), The Chairs (1952), and The New Tenant (1955). His most popular full-length play, Rhinoceros (1959), concerns a provincial French town in which all the citizens are metamorphosing into rhinoceroses. Other plays include Exit the King (1962) and A Stroll in the Air (1963). He was elected to the Académie Française in 1970.

Frank Galati was born in Highland Park, Illinois in 1943. His adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath began at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, and went on to Broadway, where it won Best Play and Best Direction Tony Awards in 1990.  He was also nominated for another Tony, for his direction of the original production of Ragtime in 1998. As Associate Director of the Goodman Theatre, he directed The Winter’s Tale and wrote and directed She Always Said, Pablo, text adapted from Gertrude Stein and images of Pablo Picasso, which went on to a successful run at the Kennedy Center.  He was Artistic Associate at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, where he adapted and directed the musical Knoxville, from James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family. He directed at the Metropolitan Opera, The Lyric Opera of Chicago, and San Francisco Opera, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for The Accidental Tourist in 1988. Galati was Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University for over 25 years.  Before his passing in 2023, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Liz Diamond (Director) has served as Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre since 1992, and her upcoming production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros will mark her 20th production here. Productions at Yale Rep include Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone; William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale; Marcus Gardley’s dance of the holy ghosts; Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy; Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle and St. Joan of the Stockyards; and Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play (world premiere), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and Father Comes Homes From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3. She has also directed new plays, adaptations, and classical works at theaters in New York and across the United States. She has won the OBIE and the Connecticut Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Direction. Liz has served as a Professor of Directing since 1992, and as Chair of the Directing Program since 2002 at David Geffen School of Drama, where she has taught and learned from generations of gifted directors whose work is advancing the art of directing theater and serving communities around the world.