“Toss out everything you thought you knew about the land you are currently occupying. MacArthur grant winner Yuval Sharon’s avant-garde L.A. opera company, the Industry, is taking on the subject in its latest production, ‘Sweet Land,’ ” writes Jessica Gelt in Thursday’s (2/27) Los Angeles Times. “This opera is an intense collaboration among renowned artists in service of a common goal: the excavation, deconstruction and reassembly of the myths surrounding the founding of America.” The creative team includes “Cannupa Hanska Luger, co-director and costume designer … raised on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota; chamber music and noise composer Raven Chacon, a member of the Navajo Nation; Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and performance artist Du Yun, who immigrated from China when she was 20; librettist Aja Couchois Duncan, a writer of Ojibwe, French and Scottish descent; and African American librettist and poet Douglas Kearney…. An audience limited to 200 … will arrive at L.A. State Historic Park and be … divided into two groups and guided to different open-air … performance spaces…. Los Angeles State Historic Park [was formerly] a point of disembarkation for migrants from around the world.” Co-conductors Marc Lowenstein and Jenny Wong will lead an orchestra of 24 musicians.
Kelci Hahn, center, and other performers rehearse a scene from “Sweet Land” under the direction of Yuval Sharon, right, at Los Angeles State Historic Park on Feb. 21, 2020. Photo by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
