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The Illusion will make its Columbia premiere Feb. 4 at USC. Theatre South Carolina is bringing the play to life at Drayton Hall Theater, and USC MFA graduate Tyler Marchant is returning to direct the production.
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| Tony Kushner |
Written by Tony Kushner, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angels in America, The Illusion is about an aging, ailing father who has disowned his son but now wants to see him and tell him that he loves him.
A sorcerer offers the father a vision of three episodes from his son’s life. Parts of the episodes are very funny, while other parts are strange and mystifying. Names change; relationships change; and each of the scenes takes place in a different setting. Only with the final vision does the audience discover the truth.
“Kushner based The Illusion on L’Illusion Comique, a 17th-century work written by Pierre Corneille, although no line in The Illusion is Corneille’s,” said Jim Hunter, theatre department chair. “Kushner pares away the ornamentation of the 17th-century French theater and, in many ways, produces a new play.”
“The Illusion is a play about love,” Marchant said. “Near the end, the sorcerer says, ‘Love, which seems the realest thing, is really nothing at all.’ This is also a play about the theatre, a place where artist and audience work together to create reality out of make-believe.”
Marchant is the associate artistic director of Primary Stages in New York City, where he has been since 1999. He also is the director of the New American Writer’s Group, where he has worked with several well-known playwrights to develop and create new plays for the American Theatre. For the last four years, he has served as the vice president of the Association of Non-Profit Theatres in New York. His directing credits include the musical Violet at the Connecticut Repertory Theatre and the world premiere of Stephen Belber’s play One Million Butterflies at Primary Stages.
"We've been working for some time to bring back some of our MFAs to work under professional contracts in our theaters," Hunter said. "Tyler has had an impressive career. Columbians will be able to say, 'We knew him when.'"
The Illusion’s cast of eight includes USC faculty, students, and community members. Nic Ularu is in charge of set design. Seventeenth-century period costumes are by MFA student Kelly Fitzpatrick.
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Demetrius Troy plays the exiled son and E.G. Heard is his lover in Theatre South Carolina's production of The Illusion.
