Their first production, mounted in August 1977, was Lanford Wilson's The Madness of Lady Bright, at the Gay Community Center (then located at 330 Grove Street in San Francisco, now the site of the Performing Arts Parking Garage), produced by Baugniet, and directed by Estes.
The 1978–1979 season opened with a revamping of Gays at Play, which consisted of LeRoi Jones' The Baptism (directed by Estes) and Fred Puliafito's Para de Noya (directed by Baugniet) — but it was the monumental success of the next production, Doric Wilson's West Street Gang (performed at the South of Market leather bar The Black & Blue), that won the company's first Cable Car Award and enabled the company to establish residence in its first home at the Goodman Building at 1115 Geary Street.
Arnold's Downtown Local, Robert Chesley's Hell, I Love You, Lanford Wilson's The Great Nebula in Orion, and Cal Yeomans's Richmond Jim, which production also toured to New York.
[4] The 1979–1980 season was dedicated to a festival of plays by Robert Patrick which included See Other Side, Fred and Harold, The Loves of the Artists, Haunted Host, Kennedy's Children, T-Shirts, and My Cup Ranneth Over.
The 1980–1981 season consisted of Doric Wilson's Forever After, Joel Schwartz's Power Lines, Noel Grieg's The Dear Love of Comrades, Harvey Fierstein's The International Stud, Victor Bumbalo's Kitchen Duty and American Coffee, and Arch Brown's News Boy.
Theatre Rhinoceros also opened its studio theater during this season with Cal Yeomans' The Line Forms to the Rear and Dan Curzon's Beer and Rhubarb Pie, and hired its third full-time employee, Raleigh Waugh, as Technical Director.
The remaining main stage productions for that year were George Birimisa's Pogey Bait,[6] Doric Wilson's Street Theater, Noël Coward's Design for Living, and a revival of T-Shirts.
Committed to exploring the impact of AIDS on the gay community, The Rhino produced several important new plays, including the collaboratively written The AIDS Show: Artists Involved with Death and Survival[7] and an updated version titled Unfinished Business that was the subject of a PBS documentary by Rob Epstein and Peter Adair, Doug Holsclaw's Life of the Party and The Baddest of Boys, Leland Moss's Quisbies, Robert Pitman's Passing, Anthony Bruno's Soul Survivor, and the Henry Mach–Paul Katz (not to be confused with cellist Paul Katz), musical Dirty Dreams of a Clean-Cut Kid, as well as cult classics like Tom Eyen's Women Behind Bars.
[8] Doug Holsclaw (1999–2003) presided over the premiere of new works by Marga Gomez, Latin Hustle, Jason Post, John Fisher, F. Allen Sawyer, Marvin White, and Guillermo Reyes.
2005 featured the holiday production of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's classic farce The Man Who Came to Dinner, starring a collection of some of the Bay Area's best-known local actors, including Floriana Alessandria, David Bicha, P. A. Cooley, Matthew Martin, Kim Larsen, Matt Weimer, Libby O'Connell, and Jeffrey Hartgraves.