JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to others?
ALAN LUCIEN ØYEN: All my work is created in response to “now”. I find inspiration everywhere around me. So, the times we live in are bound to influence the work. I always start with dialogue and creative exchange through dialogue with the cast I’m working with. With the work we’re currently touring in Canada, Story, story, die. our starting point was the concept of “staging” – how we fictionalize our everyday life in when we exchange with other people. The theatricality of producing vignettes and trailers from our lives is particularly terrifying on social media, but I think it has to do with something innately human. We are story tellers. But the concept of acceleration and dialogue that is becoming noise, because we are responding to each other with no wait/process time is scary and something that greatly influenced the work. I hope and think this make it relevant to our audiences today.
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
ALO: I don’t think it’s possible to trace change. It happens slowly constantly. Sure, my work affects me and changes within me, but no more or less than life itself. The past 15 years life and work has been the same and it constantly changes me and itself. Hopefully it’s evolution. I try to learn from every encounter I make.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
ALO: I hope very little(!)
I consider performing art a true social project, in terms that it comes about through exchange between a big group of people working tighter, (as opposed to writing or painting, which is an activity that can happen alone). Equally I believe I dialogue with the audience. If there is no dialogue, or if the work does not communicate, I have failed as an artist and a creator. Accessibility to the work is therefore very much at the forefront of my creative processes.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
ALO: Listening. My mother says, we have two ears and one mouth. Observation is key. I am an emotional person and also a believer in dialogue. I try to create emotional work that is somehow eager to engage with the audience, this is probably because of how I am as a person.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
ALO: To create. On the spot. I once read that to create a Japanese Haiku poem – in addition to the specific rules – there were “rules” that said the poem should “come from a happy place” and that the work should “feel easy.” I try to live by this. A challenge is always setting up the parameters for such creation in a pressurized environment. But I aim to and try to.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
ALO: I think the most powerful thing is to be able to be quiet together. It’s difficult and exciting and when that is true and there is understanding through silence that’s very powerful. I’d love to sit quietly with Pina Bausch, Ingmar Bergman and Nina Simone.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
ALO: I can’t recall. I find everything in life influences me, whether I like it or not/am aware or not.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
ALO: I sometimes get “what do you do in the daytime?” That’s a hopeless conversation.
“How do you remember all the words?” – That is not so magical to me, as there is logic to words.
“How do you remember all the movements?” – This really IS magic to me, because it’s all abstract.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
ALO: I say my works on the stage are poor excuses for not making films. I will eventually get round to it. I’ve been given too many opportunities that I would have had to pass up on to pursue film, so I’ve waited. I think / hope the exchange from theatre will help me make the films I’d like to make.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
ALO: Maybe be more ballsy. I know so much about life in the arts is a game of opportunities. And I’m feeling very grateful for all that I have been allowed to be a part of without actively raising my hand. But what if I hadn’t been afraid to raise my hand?
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
ALO: I’m greatly inspired by the fact that people are willing to sit down in person and listen to other people’s thoughts/ideas/problems and solutions. I think that’s powerful and what is needed in real life.
I’m terrified by the internet and the speed of which it’s changing us and the world we live in. It facilitates for some much beauty, but at such a cost. We get it all immediately now, yes. But we’ve lost waiting, for instance. And we’re burning our candle from both ends.
JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?
ALO: The fact that I get to exchange with other people through both the process and the presentation of the work. The be given the power to suggest ideas to the world is an honor.
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
ALO: I can’t recall.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
ALO: Intriguing and surprising are words I can’t use to describe myself. If they apply at all someone else has to be the judge of.