Illusions by Ivan Viripaev

Author: Ivan Viripaev

Translation: Neva Mircheva

Director: Neno Koynarski

Set Designer: Yasmin Mandelli

Cast: Anthony Penchev, Boyan Petrov, Vanesa Peiyankova, Jacqueline Daskalova

Producer: Artitude

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

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

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

In the darkly comedic interpretation by director Neno Koynarski. The cast includes Vanesa Peiyankova, Jacqueline Daskalova, Anthony Penchev, and Boyan Petrov — actors who we will meet not in front of the camera, but this time on the theater stage.

"Illusions" does not ask whether love is real.

It asks something much more uncomfortable:

Does it matter if it is real, if we have believed in it our whole lives?

Premiere: October 16 | Theatro on the other side of the canal | 19:30

November 22 | Festival and Congress Center - Varna | 19:00

A performance by the theater company ARTITUDE.