A MAGICAL ORANGE GROVE IN A NIGHTMARE

About the show

No one on this stage knows they’re in a play except me Henry Shipp is an attentive and loving father. But there’s one enormous strike against him: he doesn’t believe his son Elliot is real. To be fair, he isn’t. Elliot is a character in the play you are watching, and Henry is the only one who perceives this, to the dismay of his mother, his ex-wife and the judge in their custody battle. So who, then, gets to decide what’s real? And should Henry be allowed to care for a son he knows is fiction? This world-premiere play blends absurdity, poignant comedy and theatrical invention to explore Henry’s struggles with psychosis and the slippery boundary between reality and illusion. Award-winning playwright Noah Haidle, praised for his “unique blend of sophistication and open-heartedness” (Chicago Sun-Times), brings empathy, wit and delightful eccentricity to this deeply personal story, inspired by his lived experience with bipolar I disorder. Director Arya Shahi, whose work “brims with dramatic tension and strikes emotional chords in subtle and surprising ways” (San Diego Union-Tribune), matches Haidle’s imagination with his own distinctive sensitivity.