This allegorical opera uses the work of 17th century scientist Charles Morton as the springboard for a story about a Bird-Mother and her Bird-daughter who encounter a traveling show featuring musicians and a ringmaster. Morton’s theory was that birds migrated to the moon every year. So migration and the environment were the on minds of all of the Birds in the Moon creators.

Last week I spoke via Zoom with Pulitzer. She is a highy-acclaimed director of opera and theater.

Amongst her projects have been productions of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and at Lincoln Center), the world premiere of composer David Lang’s Prisoner of the State with the New York Philharmonic and Esperanza Spalding’s 12 Little Spells Tour. And yes, she is part of the Pulitzer family.

We discussed the opera, whether allegorical works need to be fully understood by an audience and whether the arts can make a difference in people’s understanding of socio-political crises. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing for this project, but it seems like between the radical change in weather in places like Greenland, where it rained for the first time in a location it only previously snowed, and the growing immigration crisis that’s magnified by what’s going on in Afghanistan and the inevitable backlash against refugees, it seems as though Birds in the Moon gets more topical by the day. Is that how you see it? 

I think yes is the short answer. And I feel like some of these issues have been going on for quite a while. And we just see them manifesting in all sorts of different headlines in the news. And I think that awareness is amplifying around issues related to both things and desertification and the move north to get to better farming and more fertile ground and a more hospitable place to be able to live and grow food. All that stuff is is very real. 

When you start looking at utopia and a quest for a better life, you immediately start looking at immigration, migration trends around people traveling and what motivates somebody to leave a generational homeland and seek refuge somewhere else. And it has to be generally pretty extreme. There has to be some sort of physical danger or crisis that’s precipitating it. Sometimes it’s a quest for knowledge and curiosity, but often times it’s much darker forces at work. So we were looking at what is a utopia. And also, if you’re questing to go to the moon, what does that really mean? Because if you did go to the moon as a human or an animal, you would die because there’s no oxygen. So it’s this twofold promise of utopia quest and then what happens when you really arrive and what concessions are made and what sort of life is is carved out when you get there.

You’re working with a piece here that is that is allegorical in nature. I’m wondering how important it is for you as a director to make that understood by the audience, or does it even need to be understood by the audience or even enjoyed? 

That’s a great question. Early on we decided, because we were going to be tackling some of these topics, we didn’t want to be soap-boxy. We wanted to kind of enter into a space that allowed for allegory and some sense of magic or something that’s almost like Aesop’s fables. The lesson is there, but can it be done in a way that’s a little bit more fantastical or whimsical or digestible so that it’s not just soapboxing in the park? We didn’t want to do that. So that’s kind of where the allegory emerged from during the development was to just kind of knock it off its center a little bit and to create room for magic and hope and transformation. Because that’s the stuff that we all need in order to survive and thrive as human beings, and it’s also probably the medicine, an antidote to some of the challenges that are that the piece raises.

There was a paper that was published in the last year or two that said that the more climate change becomes an issue, the more it will directly impact migration and immigration issues because people are going to be leaving these in inhospitable environments trying to find someplace easier to live.

What role do you think the arts can play in helping people become aware of truly how much of a crisis this is? And what role would you like to play as an artist in getting that message out? 

Why do art in the first place? This is kind of related to that. I mean, there’s always a political component to art, whether somebody wants to acknowledge it or not. And I was listening to [visual artist] Alfred Jafa do an interview online a while ago, and he said so succinctly, truth lies between how you and I look at the table. My view of the table is not your view of the table. Then you add to that who’s at the table or near the table to even look at it in the first place. And that really becomes sort of the the metaphor for all of this. And so I think that art can foster an understanding that my view of the table might be different than yours or that the truth lies somewhere in between. In that understanding, one hopes, is born a deeper appreciation and a deeper care. And if that is fostered, then presumably that extends outward to one’s environment and to relationships, not only with other human beings, but also to immediate surroundings and the choices that we make.

There are a lot of companies around the world that are celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s Mass on its 50th anniversary, a work that was reviled for the most part when it came out. But somehow, 50 years later, we can look at it and recognize exactly what he was doing. So with the number of new works that are being created and produced, how important do you think time will be will be in their ultimate embrace?

I always wonder about that. I mean, in terms of opera, why did certain pieces stick and become such a huge part of the repertoire and what lies dormant that we missed? That’s awesome. I guess from a musicologist point of view you would hope that the research and the due diligence to turn over and research all that material is there so that we presumably are carrying the cream of the best forward. It’s hard to say. Everyone is seeking lightning in a bottle; something that has longevity and also, I think, really good stuff that lasts past the sort of expiration date of what’s popular or immediately in the zeitgeist – like the things that last presumably tap into those deeper narratives about teaching us how to be better human beings and know what our capacity is and limits are.

The Birds in the Moon begins performances on September 1st and continues through September 4th. For event location and tickets go here.

Photo: Elkhanah Pulitzer (Photo by Kristen Loken/Courtesy Cadenza Artists)

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The first concert offers Sanchez performing the score to Birdman live at Royce Hall on Friday. On Saturday, Sanchez and his band Migration will perform at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel. I recently spoke with Sanchez about these two concerts and also about his Grammy-nominated record, Bad Hombre.

The title of your most recent album doesn’t require much time to figure out the inspiration. How can non-verbal music make political statements, particularly in our culture that seems to respond more to imagery?

I think it is very capable of doing that. I think the way you name the project or a specific tune can give the listener a really good idea of where you were at when you created it and what was going through your mind. I’m surprised not more people are doing that to be honest. Jazz musicians tend to be some of the most liberal people and I don’t see that much stuff coming out that’s reflecting on the current situation.

There’s a line in Birdman that seems to apply here. “People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talking, depressing, philosophical bullshit.”

To me it goes beyond artists. It’s civil duty at this point. As an American citizen, as a Mexican citizen, as a human being, just seeing what’s being circulated rhetorically, actively and politically. What ICE is doing to people who are just living their lives and were not any harm to society, but the other way around, they were contributing. I have seen things in the news of people in rural America that were surprised that their friends were deported. They had no idea they were illegal and they owned a restaurant and they were sad – even though they agree with the immigration policies of Donald Trump. It’s great, until it impacts you directly.

The line to or from Birdman to Bad Hombre seems short. How did your Birdman experience inspire Bad Hombre from a musical point of view?

Birdman actually informed Bad Hombre and my previous record, The Meridian Suite, which we will be playing in Los Angeles. The way it informed Meridian Suite is it’s a very cinematic piece that’s conceived as a continuous composition – we start and we don’t stop until the end. It was my attempt to write a musical novel. I had a chance to develop the characters over an extended period of time instead of ten different characters in ten different songs. I love developing a story in a more concise way. The characters have the melodies, motifs and rhythms that are played through the piece.

Bad Hombre was informed by the impact that I realized drums could have for people. Bad Hombre is very visual in a way. It’s very cinematic and has a lot of texture. I wanted to continue on that road, but make my own version. Birdman I was trying to satisfy director Alejandro Iñárritu’s vision. This time my only limitation was my imagination. Technologically speaking I learned all this new stuff. A lot of things that happened in the album were by mistake. Trial and error and “what happens if I push this button?” I kind of enjoyed that process because it was very intuitive and it sparked my imagination in very different ways than my conventional albums.

Was not being nominated for an Oscar for Birdman a blessing in disguise?

I’m not sure what would have happened if I had been nominated. But I’m sure the controversy of the elimination of the score [it was disqualified because of the number of minutes of source music also used] was great publicity. I don’t think they would have let me win if I had been nominated, but it made it so the score and my name were being circulated.

You’ve spoken of that score as being an improvised experience. Fans wanting to hear note-for-note the same music in the film might be in for a surprise. How much do you vary each performance?

They vary quite a bit. I try to maintain the dramatic impact of what was created. I know the movie so well that I take my liberties. I wish I could do the movie again because now I know it better. Every performance is different, but as a jazz musician I react organically to what is going on around me.

What do you and the audiences get from live performance?

To me music is the most interesting mind-enhancing drug. It’s fascinating that you can get ten or 10,000 people in a field and all they are doing is absorbing sound waves. That makes you feel something. That makes everyone feel something different. To me that’s incredibly fascinating – the nature of music and what happens to people.

Through music, and it’s been done many times with social change and empathy, the possibilities are endless. I’m getting involved in a project called Tiny Walls. That is going to bring musicians that live in the United States to the US/Mexico border and we’re going to perform with musicians on the other side of the border to make it obvious that walls do not exist when it comes to humanity, empathy, art and culture. It’s just one human relating to another human. I think art and music are some of the most powerful tools at our disposal.

Photo Credits: Main photo courtesy of CAP-UCLA, all other photos by Fernando Aceves and courtesy of AntonioSanchez.net.

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