The only year-round, professional theatre in Forest Park, Oak Park, River Forest and Riverside is putting on “The Illusion” next month.
Forest Theatre Company is producing “The Illusion” from Feb. 5 to 22 at Madison Street Theater in Oak Park. The play follows a father who seeks help from a magician to reconcile with his estranged son. The magician shows the father moments from his son’s life. But when he’s presented with visuals of the complex person his son is, the father has reservations.
“People change, but not necessarily in the ways we sometimes wish they would or think they will. People are very complicated machines,” said Richard Corley, Forest Theatre Company’s producing artistic director. The play reflects “coming into our reality and an alternate reality that says we can see our lives and the events of our lives — tragedies, challenges — from a remove that can allow us to judge and to live with them in a more holistic way.”
Corley was drawn to directing the play for the third time in his career because of its romance and fantasy, but also its comedic and tragic elements. Forest Theatre Company’s production of “The Illusion” differs from Corley’s previous productions in that a woman plays the magician and it has a cast of older actors.
“There’s some age, and that’s really nice because you’re getting a sense of time passing and what it means to have lived a life,” Corley said. It’s reflected in the plot of the play, too, which opens with the father lamenting driving away his son. “Anybody who has lived a life and doesn’t say they have regrets is, I think, not being honest. I think that living a life means that you look back, and you think, ‘I could have done that differently’ or ‘I should have done that differently.’”
But what the audience takes away from “The Illusion” is up to them.
“Art is a great, powerful thing in the world, but it only really speaks and changes you if you are open to that. That’s a key takeaway of this play. I think art is a two-way street. It’s a conversation,” Corley said.
Near the end of the play, the magician says, “The art of illusion is the art of love, and the art of love is the heart of the world.”
“Art is about love,” Corley added. “We have to love, and open our hearts to love, in order to be changed by art.”
“The Illusion” is a part of Forest Theatre Company’s first full indoor season with Madison Street Theater — and its first co-production with the Oak Park theater.
Corley said, though there have been growing pains in the logistics of how to share expenses, revenue and resources, Forest Theatre Company’s partnership with Madison Street Theater has been a positive experience. He said it’s been nice to rehearse where the group will perform the play.
“It creates an experience where the play comes to life in a much richer way,” Corley said. He added that Lisa Green, managing director of Madison Street Theater, “cares deeply about the art that’s in that theater,” Corley said. “She believes, as I do, that theater is a gift to the community, and that we all have to work very hard to partner with the community to make it happen.”
Buy tickets for “The Illusion” at https://www.forest-theatre.org/plays.
