Tell me love is real

Winter 2012 : two well-known American artists are in their separate hotel rooms, waiting for their show to begin. Both take an overdose of Xanax. Whitney Houston dies a tragic death. The author of this piece is still here to tell us his story. And that’s what he does. He landed in the psychiatric ward of a hospital and took the long difficult road towards recovery. A road rife with existential doubt. What is life and why do we have to live it ? It is imposed upon us and it reads like a confusing, bewildering and sometimes totally incomprehensible book. Zachary Oberzan can only find one reason. One answer. Love. Over and over again life undertakes the battle between Love and Death. The pendulum of the clock sways back and forth between heart and grave. Buddy Holly, Amelia Earhart, Bruce Lee, Serge Gainsbourg and a whole bunch of others are resurrected. They show the way. But eventually it is the voice of Leonard Cohen, alive and well, which echoes through space : “I am not the one who loves / It’s love that chooses me.” Oberzan gives you, the spectator, everything that is in him. In exchange he asks for only one thing : “Tell me, darling, tell me, tell me love is real.”

For a number of years, Zachary Oberzan was part of the New York Nature Theatre of Oklahoma but then he went solo. In 2010 he made the successful – and also autobiographical- Your Brother, Remember ?