Illusions

Author: Ivan Vyrypaev

Translation: Neva Micheva

Director: Neno Koynarski

Set Designer: Yasmin Mandelli

Cast: Anthony Penev, Boyan Petrov, Vanessa Peyankova, Jacqueline Daskalova

Producer: Artitude

“Illusions” by Ivan Vyrypaev is a tragicomic story about love, memory, and the human need to believe in our own versions of the truth.

Two married couples, more than fifty years of shared life, memories, promises, confessions, and secrets. Four people who should know one another better than anyone else. But what does it really mean to know someone? And can we ever be completely certain that we even know ourselves?

In Vyrypaev’s world, love is not as simple as it seems. What we accept as truth may turn out to be self-deception. Betrayal may be fidelity. The same life can look entirely different depending on the person telling it.

In director Neno Koynarski’s darkly comic interpretation, Vanessa Peyankova, Jacqueline Daskalova, Anthony Penev, and Boyan Petrov take the stage—actors we have encountered not in front of the camera, but this time on the theatrical stage.

“Illusions” does not ask whether love is real.

It asks something far more uncomfortable:

Does it matter whether it is real if we have believed in it all our lives?

Premiere: October 16 | Théatro on This Side of the Canal | 19:30

A production by the ARTITUDE theatre company.