ALAIN JOURDENAIS
(1980-2007) was twenty-six when he died, but he had lived much longer than that age typically suggests. He had been awake more hours. He had done much more work. And he had made many more friends.

Alain, the son of Ed and Barbara, grew up in Antioch, California, in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was a gregarious and intensely inquisitive boy, always seeking out challenges. A Cub Scout, then a Boy Scout, he eventually followed his interest to the Sea Scouts, where he became a member of the ship, Sea Prowler. He was also an avid scuba diver, clocking more than 2500 minutes of bottom time.

Alain attended Antioch schools where he pursued his interest in literature and philosophy, but by his sophomore year, he had grown impatient with the listless repetitiveness of this education. He passed the California High School Proficiency Exam to enroll at Diablo Valley College, where he studied English, and it was here he discovered the theatrical arts.

The theater was a natural destination for Alain’s interests and temperament. Here the intellectual complexities of the world’s greatest writers are summoned forth to be enacted physically in a lively and real debate that is always in the present. A play could make a statement and engage a large group of people in the important questions of our time. And although he would often express his impatience with the slowness at which traditional theater evolved, he recognized its galvanizing power.

While studying at DVC, and tutoring ESL, Alain began to work at theaters throughout the East Bay, including the Willows Theater Company, the Lesher Center for the Arts, and, most happily, at the progressive Impact Theatre in Berkeley. In 2003, after a fortuitous meeting with Chris Akerlind, he decided to follow his interest to Cal-Arts, where he found a new family of artists and he majored in lighting design under the guidance of Lap-Chi Chu.

For the next three years, Alain worked day and night on a great number of theater and dance pieces, as a lighting designer, as a lighting assistant, and as a master electrician on shows from Doctor Faustus to Saints Play to Hell’s Kitchen to Book of Tink. He interned at the Evidence Room in 2004 and immediately initiated a full-scale project, Homewrecker, for which he produced, designed scenery and lighting, and even stage-managed. He became a member of the company by the end of the year. And he began working in many capacities at REDCAT on music, dance and theater pieces, perhaps most memorably on an outlandish performance piece with the legendary Penny Arcade.

Everyone loved collaborating with Alain. His imagination and crazy ideas, his intelligence, his engagement and energy, his selfless devotion to figuring it out and getting it right no matter the difficulty, his precision, his sense of fun in the work, the casual confidence with which he made art. He especially loved conquering new terrain, the challenges for which he would have to educate himself anew. His potential was huge.

Upon graduation in 2006, Alain began touring with Diavolo Dance Theater as lighting director/designer, mounting dance spectacles at theaters all over the US, and -- on his first trip overseas -- in Seoul, Korea, and throughout Italy, an adventure he enjoyed thoroughly. And he continued to work around town at many venues including the 24th Street Theater, the Ivar, the Lost Studio, and with Filament Theatre Company, among others. He continued living in the downtown church space he and his close friend Chris Kuhl, Colin Trevor, and Bryce Hall had renovated, and later with an ever-changing roster of artist roommates, -- and with his girlfriend, Lindsay Rosenboom. Many legendary gatherings there -- just as at his Valencia apartment -- extended deep into the night with some of LA’s most promising theater-makers.

Alain daily lived the life he wanted to live. He did the jobs he wanted to do. He skipped whatever didn’t interest him -- but what he did, he did full throttle. He smoked and drank as he liked, and stayed up all night if he felt he should. He pursued his interests honestly, independently, even religiously, without concern for the eyes of others, or qualifying thoughts of the future. And he dealt with those around him always very naturally and personally. Perhaps that is why he had so many friends, and those friends have so many stirring memories.

He left the world September 28, 2007 and he will be sorely missed.