“Swedish cultural life is unthinkable without her” • Loa Falkman: “She was so incredibly alive”
Suzanne Osten is dead, the family tells Aftonbladet. The playwright and director turned 80 years old. She has been active as a director since the late 1960s and has been praised by many.
Dagens Nyheter’s culture manager Björn Wiman was sitting in his morning meeting when he got the news – something he took hard.
– I have rarely been so shocked in my professional life. It is a complete killing blow, he says in Nyhetsmorgon.
Met her last week
He met her as recently as last week at a cinema in Stockholm.
– She was going to see “The Apprentice”, i.e. the film about Donald Trump. I bought a tablet case, a bit silly as an adult like that. But I saw that she took note of this, but being the people lover that she was, she just looked at the pill box with some amusement. She saw the child in one and all people, he says.
“Swedish cultural life is unthinkable without Suzanne Osten”
Björn Wiman described an immense sense of sadness over Suzanne Osten’s death and he was very touched.
– It is such an enormous breadth. Swedish cultural life is unthinkable without Suzanne Osten. It is an unimaginable loss, he says.
How would you describe her?
– Completely era-defining and just like when her, in this context, antagonist Benny Fredriksson passed away quickly and tragically many years ago, it was a person who has helped create modern Swedish theater life. Swedish theater life today is unthinkable without Suzanne Osten.
Loa Falkman: “She was and is so incredibly alive”
The Swedish opera singer and actor Loa Falkman worked with Suzanne Osten during “Bröderna Mozart”. He has only good things to say about her.
– It is a great sadness, of course. She was and is so incredibly alive that I was a little shocked in the morning. It is mixed with great warmth and great joy and great gratitude that I got to work with her. She was wonderful as a director and gave us a lot of freedom like real directors do. She had a wonderful mix between fantasy and reality. She was truly a bridge from fantasy into reality, he says.
What do you think she means to the culture?
– An incredible amount, above all for children’s culture and children’s theater, which has possibly been treated a little step-motherly. She took it very seriously. This means that the growing family gets culture from the beginning and seriously.
The Minister of Culture: “It is a great loss”
Culture Minister Parisa Liljestrand (M) describes great sadness over Suzanne Osten’s death.
“It is hardly possible to overestimate her importance for Swedish performing arts and theater for children and young people, in Sweden but also internationally. She has shaped a generation of stage artists and countless of us have been able to find ourselves in her world for a moment, both in the theater and the cinema. It is a great loss for the theatre, where she was also active until the end,” she writes in a written comment.