THE GREAT PRETENDER

In his new, acclaimed performance, all-rounder and gifted Elvis impersonator Zacharzy Oberzan combines elements of film, theatre and music into a schmaltzily tragicomic evening circling around the issue of identity and the roles we all play every day. As THE GREAT PRETENDER, Oberzan plays a bizarre game of deliberate confusion, entrapping his audience in the inextricableness of illusion and reality, performance and life, identity and construction, sometimes as a character from a film, sometimes as Elvis and sometimes as his own alter ego.

Zachary Oberzan drew his inspiration for this piece from Close Up, a fictitious documentary film by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Like in this film, Oberzan ignites a cunning game of confusion in his performance, guiding his audience into the shoals between fiction, documentary and reconstruction. Among other things, he makes an appearance as the hustler Aaron Aranovitch, who manages to dupe a whole theatre cast. Also, Oberzan impersonates Elvis and gives film-maker Kiarostami himself a key role in his performance. This way, THE GREAT PRETENDER celebrates the love for film and theatre and the desire to keep wanting to become somebody else.

Film-maker, director, performer and singer-songwriter Zachary Oberzan is a founding member of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma in New York, he performed with the Wooster Group and Richard Foreman and has realised several productions of his own. His most recent appearance at brut was in 2014 with Tell Me Love Is Real.