Ömer KOCAK ALPARSLAN
Actor

Ömer received a grant to help to help him study at the Théâtre national de Strasbourg.

What is your artistic background?
I have just completed my third and final year at the TNS School. Before attending the school, I took a preparatory course at the Filature de Mulhouse through a competitive exam. I connected primarily with authors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nazim Hikmet, Anna Akhmatova, Darwich, and Aimé Césaire. I navigated through the languages of my contemporaries, Alexandrian verse, Greek tragedies, and philosophical and political texts. The text is a pillar, a structure, a rhythm, a breath, and the element to which the actor can cling onto in order to continue to nourish their inner landscape. During my training, I was also influenced by other disciplines, notably masked games, clowning, music, dance, neutral masks, documentary theater, contact improvisation, and many others. I had the opportunity to travel to Pisa, to the Prima del Teatro – Scuola Europea per l'Arte dell'Attore. There I met actors from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Belgium and discovered their world and their craft. I did an internship with Grace Andrews and Charlotte Monskoe, teachers at the Guildhall in London. During my three years at the TNS, I also worked on projects set up by my friends and colleagues. It was three years of creativity and research, artistically nourishing.

 How do you view your profession today?
I actively and passively observe and listen to what is around me and what is happening inside me. Ultimately, my gaze is never fixed; it changes. It is modified by events, by the news around us. It is like a character: it is never static. What we call a “character” or ‘figure’ is constantly in motion, just like the “gaze” I cast on my profession, on art, and on my career.

Where do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?
I have resumed writing a screenplay that I have duly modified because times have changed. I would like to plant it so that it can grow and come to life. Within 10 years, it would be nice to have already made a film and/or directed a play. What drives me in all this is directing and communicating with other professionals, not to mention directing actors. It's an exercise I enjoy because it's meticulous work, a job that requires listening and sharing, with everything having to be perfectly coordinated between the director and the actor. I would say that this is when you understand an actor the most. 

This interview was conducted in 2025
Photography credit : Isabelle Chapuis