Winterguests

In 2016, Alan Lucien Øyen and co-author Andrew Wale returned to the theme of their first collaboration for winter guests: AMERICA – Visions of Love (2009), and decided to create two extra pieces in a trilogy that examines European expectations of American reality. Despite the fact that we have been exposed to the USA’s self mythologising narrative through film and TV for many years, we still struggle to understand America from the other side of the ocean that separates us. An encounter with the USA is like meeting an old friend you have never seen before. Many outsiders have tried to get inside America. Winter guests continues this tradition by piecing together a narrative based on subjective truths observed by real Americans – and the company’s own disillusions and misunderstandings as people on the outside. All of the chapters in the trilogy are in the form of original text, based on transcriptions of recorded conversations collected during journeys through the USA in 2009, 2016 and 2017. The first part, Visions of Love, was written as a play, and performed as a screenplay. In the second part, Psychopatriot (2016), winter guests wrote their own ‘Great American Novel’, about the company itself and its period of residency in The Hamptons. With the final part, SuperAmateur (2017), winter guests return to the silver screen, and create a large-scale theatre that explores American reality as film fiction, by installing a film set on the converted main stage of Dansens Hus. The America trilogy has developed through residencies and workshops at venues including the Robert Wilsons Watermill Center on Long Island, and the legendary New York Theater Workshop.