The Great Pretender

Zachary Oberzan, a founding member of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma from New York, often interrogates his own identity between private person and art figure in his performances. In “Tell Me Love Is Real,” which was presented at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in 2015, he spoke about his attempt at suicide, which took place around the same time as that of Whitney Houston, except that Oberzan survived. In his new work “The Great Pretender,” the multitalented artist combines film, theatrical and musical elements into a tragicomic evening, pursuing the surprising parallels between his own life and the lives of others. It begins with an odd mix-up in which Oberzan, as “The Great Pretender,” celebrates the desire of constantly wanting to be someone else: A con man appears and tries to fool the staff at a theatre, Oberzan himself does an enchanting Elvis impersonation, the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami reconstructs the events in a film. The story of a man torn by the problematic between his own identity and artistic creation.