Following the success of The Hamlet Complex, Alan Lucien Øyen returned to the main stage of The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet with Nothing Personal, an ambitious new work that examines empathy and estrangement in the digital era. With original music by Oscar-winning film composer Alexandre Desplat, conducted by Sol Re, and a monumental wooden set by Åsmund Færavaag, the production fuses cinematic precision with theatrical scale.
Øyen shines a spotlight on human connection in a world increasingly devoid of empathy.
At once vast and intimate, Nothing Personal unfolds inside a single apartment building - a microcosm of the modern condition. Through interwoven stories of loss, alienation, and connection, the piece portrays individuals caught in the machinery of their time: a mother haunted by her child’s absence, a professor unraveling the dynamics of desire and imitation, a reclusive young man slipping into digital extremism, and a woman struggling to function in a world that demands constant resilience. The performance becomes, in Øyen’s words, “a theatrical essay on truth, technology, and alienation.”
“It is theatre, ballet, and music – all at once. The diversity is dazzling.”
The work draws inspiration from Greek theatre, its action framed by a living chorus of dancers and a chorus-speaker, Kate Pendry. The myth of Philomela - retold here as the story of a modern woman, played by Yvonne Øyen - becomes the emotional core: a reflection on trauma, survival, and voice. The piece also delves into contemporary myths - #MeToo, digital radicalization, and the illusion of intimacy - through multiple intersecting narratives, from incel subcultures to hikikomori withdrawal and the invention of an AI company offering to “recreate the dead.”
The staging mirrors the complexity of this world. A monolithic, raked wooden stage transforms as hidden rooms, corridors, and trees rise and vanish - “desks and walls lifted, chairs sinking into the floor, a landscape in constant motion.” Movement and text are inseparable: roles double and split, psychology becomes physical, and even computation is choreographed as dancers embody the mimetic feedback loops that drive social media.
In this production Øyen seizes our contemporary moment, the time of anxiety … alternating between large tableaux and close-ups of human destinies.
Desplat’s sweeping score binds these fractured worlds together, echoing the pulse of a society both connected and alone. The result is a monumental, deeply human work - part lament, part revelation - that captures the unease and beauty of being alive now.
Interview:
Alan Lucien Øyen on Nothing Personal
Alan Lucien Øyen on the making of Nothing Personal – a cinematic fusion of dance and theatre exploring the tragedies and tenderness of our time, with original music by Oscar-winner Alexandre Desplat.
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