Dream life, even if only for a short period, was taken seriously. It was mainstream. It was considered highly valuable to so many us and to the collective as a whole. Hopefully this kind of work offers a timely reminder that dreams are there, accessible, free, and already telling us so much.

To pretend and to appease is the most cowardly option of all.

Rather, it is scared of its own ideas, and desperate to appease. So they have decided to make a choice: to one side, they will pretend to be human while voicing like a rhino. And to the other, they will pretend to be a rhino, while voicing like a human. It is the most cowardly option of all.

It is not a courageous government. It's not a govt insisting on facing down violence, or leading a call towards dignity and kindness.

But worse than that (and why I'm think about this play now) is that I see this Labour govt, our labour govt, trying to do a third thing. It is trying to be both human and a rhinoceros. It makes all the rhinoceros noises while walking around in human form.

You know, it's not courageous to make an order to 'kill them all'. It is courageous to remain human while those kinds of orders are being made, though. It is not courageous to steal the jewellery of those fleeing persecution. It is courageous to choose to see the human that jewellery is worn by.

He chooses instead to remain human (and therefore deeply vulnerable in a world of rhinoceroses). And this is the thing I like most about the play -- it's not a morality tale, it's a story that hinges on a choice of whether to be human or not.

Berenger (the protagonist) watches his friends, colleagues, those he loves, become unrecognisable to him, and indistinguishable from each other. He has to face his own fears and doubts and lack of safety, but ultimately he refuses it, refuses the perceived safety of violent, discriminatory ideas.

For the people of the play it is, at first, shocking to see this transformation. It's something to laugh at, to disbelieve. Gradually, though, the transformation itself becomes normalised as more people embrace it. And the more people that do, the more come to see it as a kind of safety.

Are they still human or have they been taken too?

I have noticed when I speak to people I don't know (and some I do), or see one of the many clips of some notable person or other speaking out, speaking to their understanding of this era. There is this moment of breath-holding, isn't there, where you wait to find out..

I'd always thought it was a bit silly (and therefore thrilling in the way absurdism can be) to have this concept of populist ideological conformity illustrated by the idea of people changing into rhinoceroses as they succumb to the perceived safety of violent ideas. But now, I see it.

The poster we'll send you if you donate at least $66, the cost of a blanket, is designed by our friends at the Institute of Barbarian Books.