Sweet Land – CANCELED

All remaining performances of SWEET LAND have been canceled. A video recording of the piece will be available for on-demand streaming starting as early as Friday, March 20. 

Even if you never experienced Invisible Cities at Union Station or Hopscotch in cars around Los Angeles or War of the Worlds in a former parking lot across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall, you probably heard about them. I can assure you word has already spread about the new project from The Industry called Sweet Land which is now being performed at Los Angeles State Historic Park.

Yuval Sharon, the Artistic Director of The Industry, has assembled an amazing team to tell, in opera form, the story of indigenous people (or The Hosts as they are called here) who encounter settlers (or The Arrivals.)

The team includes composers Du Yun (Pulitzer Prize winner for her opera Angel’s Bone) and Raven Chacon; librettists Douglas Kearney and Aja Couchois Duncan and joining Sharon as director is Cannupa Hanska Luger.

The creators refer to Sweet Land as an opera that erases itself. Let them explain.

There are two distinctly different tracks you can experience when you see Sweet Land. One is entitled Feast and the other is Train. (Note that they are separate and require separate tickets.)

The opera begins with Contact where The Hosts and The Arrivals first meet. Then you begin on either Train or Feast. In each track you experience the story first as a natural progression from Contact. There is an interstitial section (called The Crossroads) that immediately follows either Train 1 or Feast 1. The Crossroads allows for both tracks to reset and tell a different story about life once The Arrivals have made their presence known and have completely appropriated the land, the life and the people we were first introduced to as The Hosts. (These are called Train 2 and Feast 2).

Sweet Land comes to a conclusion in the same space where it started in a section called Echoes and Expulsions. (By the way, the higher you sit in the bleachers for this last segment, the more you will experience.)

Having seen both tracks I can tell you that you are in for a moving and thoroughly thought-provoking experience. It is recommended that you do NOT see both tracks in the same day. I can attest to the wisdom behind that because I did see both tracks on the same day. My mind was filled with so much that I regret not having the proper time to digest and think about what I had experienced. This is truly powerful and inventive work.

One other thing to be aware of before going: this all takes place outdoors at night. You will spend time walking, standing and sitting in the elements. Even though we are in Los Angeles, it does gets cold during the performances. I strongly recommend you bundle up before attending even more than you might otherwise normally do. (Makes me even more amazed that the 31-person cast and the 24 musicians and 2 conductors can sing and play as beautifully as they do.)

There are two full performances each night and each track runs 85 minutes.

For tickets go here.

Main Photo is an image from The Crossroads in Sweet Land (Photo by Casey Kringlen for The Industry/Courtesy of The Industry)

Update: This post incorrectly listed Yuval Sharon as Shuval. That correction has been made. We regret the error.