Incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, the author began an arduous and experimental journey towards recovery. What is life, and why should we live it, having had it thrust upon us like the assigned reading of a baffling mystery novel, the chapters jumbled, the text often incomprehensible? In the thirty-seven years of life leading up to this event, we find a simple but elusive answer: Love. The athletic struggle between Love and Death is played out time and again through life, as the pendulum swings back and forth between the heart and the grave. Longing for a hero to point the way, the ghosts of Buddy Holly, Amelia Earhart, Bruce Lee, Serge Gainsbourg, and a host of others are resurrected, but it is the words of Leonard Cohen that echo through the room: "I am not the one who loves/ It's love that chooses me." Right here, right now, the prayerful Oberzan calls upon you, the audience, for help. He will give you all he's got.

Tell me Love is Real is made hauntingly beautiful not in the least because of Oberzan’s willingness to expose his own want of love, and his revealing accounts of the hardships that riddle his own struggle. But the most powerful aspect of Tell Me Love Is Real is that it offers insight into the relationship that exists between the lonely actor up on stage, and the members of the audience. It forces the audience to recognize that it is we who must answer the call, and convince Oberzan that love is real. -- NATT&DAG, OSLO