Power of the Pen

by Jill Duff-Hoppes

Composer-lyricist Alexander Sage Oyen was predestined for a career in music, it would seem.

After all, Alex – an Orlando native who now resides in New York City – grew up with a songstress mother who was a frequent cabaret performer in the Big Apple. His father is in the entertainment industry, too, being a writer and director of theme park shows for Walt Disney World.

“My mom is an incredible singer and is very close friends with a lot of awesome New York composers, which probably instilled in me my desire to be a composer,” says the 29-year-old Alex, who recalls listening to his mother sing along to her friends’ demo tapes in the car. “I thought these were normal songs – just things on the radio. But I was getting an art song education like no other by the age of three.”

An award-winning lyricist, Alex has been named one of Playbill magazine’s Contemporary Musical Theatre Songwriters You Should Know. He has several musicals and albums to his credit, and his work has been heard at major theatrical venues including Lincoln Center in New York and the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, as well as in Thailand, London, and the Netherlands. Last year during the pandemic lockdown, Alex created a folk-rock concept album that featured performances by stellar Broadway talent, including LaChanze of The Color Purple and Orlando’s Michael James Scott, best known for Aladdin.

For years, Alex was on track to become an actor before making the switch to songwriting. Born in Kissimmee, he attended Dr. Phillips Elementary and Southwest Middle School and was enrolled in the visual and performing arts magnet program at Dr. Phillips High School.

At age 13 – while simultaneously studying for his bar mitzvah – Alex competed on a reality television show called In Search of the Partridge Family. The VH1 program was a reboot of sorts of the 1970s-era TV show, The Partridge Family, about a widowed mom and her brood of singing children.

Alex, who competed for the role of son Danny, ended with a third-place finish and the highest singing scores on the show, which was filmed in Los Angeles. Fun fact: Also competing was Emma Stone, who won the part of daughter Laurie and went on to become an A-list movie actress. Alex jokes that he’s had a crush on Emma ever since.

In middle school, Alex branched out and began playing guitar and writing songs, à la pop star John Mayer. Although Alex loved writing more, he stayed the course with acting for years.

“I was getting accolades for acting, so as much as my heart wasn’t necessarily there, I wanted to continue to pursue it,” he says. “I got really incredible opportunities to meet and work with some heroes as an actor before I gave it all up, which was cool.”

For example, in high school, Alex starred alongside Broadway legends Davis Gaines and Faith Prince in a concert-style production of the musical Sweeney Todd in Orlando. After graduating from Dr. Phillips, he studied classical acting – primarily Shakespearean performance – at the University of Minnesota. At age 20, though, Alex left to move to New York, where he had the chance to jumpstart his writing career through mentorships with accomplished composers.

Alex, who got married this past summer, occasionally makes it back to his hometown of Orlando to visit and would love to premiere one of his musicals here, given the opportunity. His father and mother, Christopher Oyen and Lois Sage, still live in Orlando, as does one of his two sisters.

Although acting is only a hobby now, the profession is still a big part of Alex’s world because his new bride, Rachel Gabriella Franco, is a performer. Alex credits the time he spent treading the boards with making him a better composer and lyricist.

“I don’t think I would be good at this if I didn’t have an understanding of what it takes to be on the stage and also what it takes to deliver lines,” he says.

Alex, who taught himself to play piano and notate music, says one of the most appealing things about composing is the detail work involved.

“I write a song, and then I get to think about it for months and meticulously change a word or a note and make it significantly better because of a small thing,” he says.

In August, Alex performed a concert of his songs at Feinstein’s/54 Below in New York City, where several of his musically talented friends joined him on stage as guest singers.

In addition to creating his own shows, Alex frequently takes on freelance projects. He was hired by a Japanese company to write a musical that’s slated to premiere in Japan in 2022. And, he has been commissioned by Penn State University to help create a musical based on a strange-but-true story about three teenage girls who seduced and killed Nazis in their hometown in Holland.

Over the past year, Alex has also released three charity benefit singles, each one sung by Broadway performers. One song benefited the Humane Society while another raised funds for Black Lives Matter. The most recent single, a heartbreakingly beautiful number titled Pretty Little Things, will support teen suicide prevention charities.

 “I’m trying to use my friendships and my collaborations with people who have visibility to bring visibility to causes that I believe in,” says Alex. “My main goal in musical theater is to foster a community where people share work and feel comfortable – people who are diverse, not just who look like me and think like me. I think that our job as composers is to speak to community but also to foster community.”