23 Facts About Suzanne Osten

Carlota Suzanne Osten was a Swedish film director, stage director, and screenwriter.

Suzanne Osten won the award for Best Director at the 22nd Guldbagge Awards for the film The Mozart Brothers.

Suzanne Osten was born in Stockholm on 20 June 1944.

Suzanne Osten's parents were married in 1941 but divorced when Suzanne Osten was little.

In 1963, Osten graduated from Viggbyholmsskolan, a high school with a curriculum focused on language and creative subjects.

Suzanne Osten then studied art, literature and history at Lund University, where she began directing at the university theater.

Suzanne Osten formed one of Sweden's first fringe theatrical companies, Fickteatern, and began her career as a stage director there in the late 1960s.

Suzanne Osten was a pioneer in developing theater for children.

Suzanne Osten remained true to this standpoint in her writing, directing, and even casting of plays and films.

Suzanne Osten worked there as both stage director and artistic director until the summer of 2014 and developed a process for creating a performance.

Suzanne Osten had been cautioned that children this young could not comprehend a drama, but she defied critics, and, during this performance, infants, without previous theater-going knowledge, sat as a theatre audience collectively watching the play for one hour.

Suzanne Osten documented the reaction of the young audience in Baby Drama: A documentary film with the baby as the lens where the viewer sees infants' faces watching the performance.

Suzanne Osten found this to be proof of adult significance as performers, as art distributors, and of human love for communication.

Suzanne Osten interpreted the reaction of the audience as an innate need in a child for gestures, facial expressions, emotions, language, and bodies from which to learn communication.

Suzanne Osten's process involved the entire theatrical company; writers, actors, technicians, mask makers, based on research and extended collaboration with audience groups.

Experts outside the theater world, artists, and academic researchers were invited by Suzanne Osten to contribute with their expertise to the evolutionary and improvisational process of a stage production.

Suzanne Osten put this method of working to the test in Baby Drama when she wanted to investigate how early an audience can be receptive to theatrical performance.

Suzanne Osten was a guest director at theaters other than Unga Klara and in genres other than children's theater.

In 2014, Suzanne Osten directed a major Nordic theatrical collaboration involving artists from Iceland, Finland, and Sweden.

For Broderna Mozart, Suzanne Osten was awarded a Guldbagge in 1987 for Best Director.

In November, 2014, Suzanne Osten was appointed Sweden's first Children's Film Ambassador by the Swedish Film Institute.

The film The Girl, the Mother and the Demons was written and directed by Suzanne Osten based on her fictionalized autobiography, Flickan, mamman och soporna [The Girl, the mother and the rubbish], which was revised for the stage by Erik Uddenberg with the same title.

Suzanne Osten's colleagues initiated a protest, and the rating decision was appealed successfully.