Fantasy abounds in The Little Prince. But a production concept now on display at the National Opera Center is grounded in a harsh reality, using the Rachel Portman/ Nicholas Wright opera to examine the experience of undocumented immigrants crossing into the United States.

Director Noam Shapiro and his collabo­rators — Santiago Orjuela-Laverde (scenic design), Tamrin Goldberg (choreography), Haydee Zelideth (costume design), Reza Behjat (lighting design) and Yana Birÿkova (projection design) — have recast the story as a tale that an immigrant father tells at the southern border to calm his children. This transforms their ordeal into a kind of magi­cal escape, turning the smugglers, officers and aid workers that they encounter into mythical beings. The set is a white box with three portholes, representing a prisonlike detention center. As the story develops, the walls come alive with lighting and projec­tion displays, depicting the Prince’s fanciful visions, and making the setting a place of both imprisonment and imagination.

Shapiro argues that the innova­tive concept stays true to the opera’s source material, Antoine de Saint-Ex­upéry’s novel. “Exupéry himself was in exile,” he says. “Embedded within his story is the experience of being lost in a world you do not recognize. It’s about people who are searching for a safer home.”

The Little Prince crew is among the four finalist teams for the 2019 Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase. This biennial OPERA America program awards each team $2,000 and gives the artists the opportunity to showcase their designs at both the Na­tional Opera Center and the Opera Confer­ence, where they are introduced to industry leaders from around the country.

The Director-Designer Showcase is supported by the Tobin Theatre Arts Fund.