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The road to Hopscotch: an exploration of identity with Los Angeles' mobile opera

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The road to Hopscotch: an exploration of identity with Los Angeles' mobile opera

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Content THE ROAD TO HOPSCOTCH: AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY WITH LOS ANGELES’ MOBILE OPERA by Corinne DeWitt A Thesis Presented to the   FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS) May 2016 Copyright 2016 Corinne DeWitt 2 Acknowledgments Deepest thanks to Arts Journalism director and champion Sasha Anawalt for her devoted mentorship. Her unwavering care has inspired and motivated me throughout my degree program, and this project exists because of her advocacy. Thank you also to Victor Figueroa and Professor Peggy Bustamante for their patient coding and technical help. I owe my successes to my beautiful family, Dominica and Michael LoPrete and Kristin DeWitt, whose profound and unconditional support fueled me through every step of my development, and to my dear teammate, Patrick Claypool. Lastly, I’m sincerely appreciative of the people of The Industry—Yuval Sharon and Elizabeth Cline, who were so generous to share their beautiful project with me, and whose creativity and sense of adventure inspires me so. 3 Table of Contents 1. Acknowledgements 2 2. List of Figures 5 3. Abstract 8 4. Introduction 9 5. Web: Home Page 16 a. Web Introduction 16 b. Route System 17 i. Marc Lowenstein Radio Piece 18 c. Animations 21 6. Web: Page 2, Drive Through, Hopscotch at a Glance 23 a. Characters 23 b. Synopsis 25 c. Story maps 26 7. Web: Page 3, On the Road, Live Chapters 29 a. 1-24 8. Web: Page 4, The Central Hub 73 a. Time lapse 73 b. Finale Description 74 c. Photo gallery 75 9. Web: Page 5, Behind the Wheel: Meet The Industry and the Creative Team 77 a. Invocation 77 b. Meet the Creative Team 84 4 c. Ann Closs-Farley piece 89 d. Q/A with Elizabeth Cline 89 10. Web: Page 6, Under the Hood: A Word with the Artists 135 a. Muchas Luchas 136 b. Hopscotch Diaries 138 c. Story transcripts 139 11. Concluding Thoughts 209 12. References 211 5 List of Figures Figure 1. Screen shot of top of homepage 16 Figure 2. Screen shot of middle of homepage 17 Figure 3. Screen shot of bottom of homepage 21 Figure 4. Screen Shot of top of Drive Through page 23 Figure 5. Screen shot of middle of Drive Through page 24 Figure 6. Screen shot of Red Route story map 27 Figure 7. Screen shot of Yellow Route story map 27 Figure 8. Screen shot of Green Route story map 28 Figure 9. Screen shot of Chapters page 29 Figure 10. Screen shot of Chapter 2 modal 31 Figure 11. Screen shot of Chapter 4 modal 32 Figure 12. Screen shot of Chapter 6 modal 34 Figure 13. Screen shot of Chapter 7 modal 36 Figure 14. Screen shot of Chapter 8 modal 38 Figure 15. Screen shot of Chapter 9 modal 39 Figure 16. Screen shot of Chapter 11 modal 41 Figure 17. Screen shot of Chapter 12 modal 43 Figure 18. Screen shot of Chapter 14 modal 44 Figure 19. Screen shot of Chapter 15 modal 46 Figure 20. Screen shot of Chapter 17 modal 48 Figure 21. Screen shot of Chapter 18 modal 50 Figure 22. Screen shot of Chapter 19 modal 52 6 Figure 23. Screen shot of Chapter 20 modal 54 Figure 24. Screen shot of Chapter 22 modal 56 Figure 25. Screen shot of Chapter 24 modal 57 Figure 26. Screen shot of Chapter 25 modal 59 Figure 27. Screen shot of Chapter 26 modal 61 Figure 28. Screen shot of Chapter 28 modal 63 Figure 29. Screen shot of Chapter 29 modal 64 Figure 30. Screen shot of Chapter 31 modal 66 Figure 31. Screen shot of Chapter 32 modal 68 Figure 32. Screen shot of Chapter 33 modal 70 Figure 33. Screen shot of Chapter 35 modal 72 Figure 34. Screen shot of time lapse on The Central Hub page 73 Figure 35. Screen shot of photo gallery on Central Hub page 75 Figure 36. Screen shot of top of Behind the Wheel page 77 Figure 37. Screen shot of Creative Team feature of Behind the Wheel page 84 Figure 38. Screen shot of interview section of Behind the Wheel page 89 Figure 39. Early sketch of the Red Route 100 Figure 40. Early sketch of the Green Route 122 Figure 41. Early sketch of the Yellow Route 123 Figure 42. New Year’s Even on Wells Street in Manchester, Joel Goodman 126 Figure 43. Screen shot of top of Under the Hood page 135 Figure 44. Screen shot of Muchas Luchas section of Under the Hood page 136 Figure 45. Screen shot of Hopscotch Diaries portion of Under the Hood page 138 7 Figure 46. Screen shot of About page 210 8 Abstract This project is both a documentary and a diary exploring how art and identity intertwine. In the fall of 2015, the mobile opera, Hopscotch, stirred the streets of Los Angeles. Hopscotch was a mass collaboration of six librettists, six composers, and over 100 artists, musicians and collaborators from all walks. Together this web of artists created a work of public art that revolutionized the way Los Angeles thinks of opera. Instead of on stage, Hopscotch played out in a fleet of cars that shuttled audiences between an array of live vignettes with performers stationed at iconic locations across the city. The nature of the site-specific performance required that Hopscotch be temporary, a six-week alternate reality superimposed on top of Los Angeles as it lives in real time and space. The show’s evanescence made it feel urgent to preserve it. To capture the sights and sounds of Hopscotch felt like an enormous responsibility, one that I took very seriously. Journalists are oft asked to remain objective, holding the subjects of their stories at arms length. However, my immersion in the documentation of Hopscotch-- recording the way it sounded, looked and felt-- let me understand the opera on a level that was deeply personal. My coverage of Hopscotch became a vehicle for my development as a journalist and as a person. Many who were involved with the creative process share my sense of profound connection to Hopscotch. Members of the audience, performers and producers feel changed for having experienced it. Art has permeated our consciousness, becoming part of our character. To tell the story of Hopscotch, I hoped to capture the nebulous nature of the production with a multifaceted website, pages with layers of memory depicting the chapters, the Central Hub as it was built, the stories of the artists and the creators, a digital universe where Hopscotch can live online, a space as creative as the work itself. 9 INTRODUCTION: When I became aware of Hopscotch in September of 2015, I had never been to an opera, and I had certainly never before covered one as a journalist. I wondered how to tell the story of a story that has no beginning and no end. In Hopscotch, time exists simultaneously, “a billion universes precariously balanced. 1 ” The complexity of this production became immediately clear to me when I attended the first Hopscotch rehearsal, where the entire cast and crew assembled to hear Artistic Director Yuval Sharon’s vision. At that first meeting, over 100 artists and collaborators sat elbow to elbow, transfixed upon Sharon as he described the Hopscotch logistics--how subsets of cast members assigned to each chapter would repeat the same performance over and over again as audience members cycled through. Sharon wanted them to view the repetition as a form of meditation that kept them present, in the moment, achieving a state of grace. He spoke about art that has purpose--art that invites the audience to share the transcendence they achieve as performers. He hoped Hopscotch would be as pleasurable to perform as it would be to witness. He appealed to the artists’ higher sensibilities, to the passion that drives them to practice their crafts in the first place 2 . 1 Hopscotch. Tom Jacobson et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 2 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 10 His opening words were a call to action, a call to grace for the artists. They were also an invocation for me as a journalist, to thoroughly document the creative process behind this important project. Without the conventions of a chronological narrative, I realized that, to effectively record how Hopscotch came to be, I must do so through the lens of my own experience as an audience member and a storyteller. So began my total immersion into the Hopscotch world. I kept in constant contact with The Industry’s Executive Director Elizabeth Cline, who graciously allowed me to attend rehearsals for various chapters and photograph them. I had never used a DSLR camera before, so I learned how to be a photojournalist on the fly out in the field, sometimes succeeding, but often failing outright. The Central Hub was of particular interest to me. The search for a center in a city without one was thematically important to Hopscotch. I was impressed that the opera company would build a pop-up gallery structure to emphasize the themes of the production. With The Industry’s permission, I began work on a time lapse of the Hub’s construction. For 26 days in September and October, usually around sunrise, I drove to the SCI-Arc campus and set up my tripod and DSLR at marked points on the pavement. I programmed a graphing calculator to act as an intervalometer and jerry-rigged it to the camera. Then I’d wait, writing or researching, for hours 11 while the shutter clicked away, three frames every 20 seconds. On the first day, I forgot to remove the lens cap. Some days I’d wait for hours for construction workers who never showed. Sometimes entire walls went up while I was away. Sitting with my thoughts in that parking lot became both the most frustrating and most soothing aspect of my Hopscotch coverage. I saw the slow erection of the Hub as a symbol for my own progress on my quest to make compelling journalism—sometimes effective, sometimes plodding. I felt jubilant to see the hub finally completed in the dark hours before opening day. When I saw the Red Route preview on October 4, the orienteer who checked me in said that smartphone cameras were permitted in the cars. Of course, I hadn’t planned on recording while on the routes themselves because The Industry’s website was very clear: no cameras. I suspected the orienteer was mistaken, and I hesitated before taking advantage of the permission, but when my car mates whipped out their phones, I decided that this project would benefit from recorded media. The resulting iPhone footage, replete with bumps from potholes and ambient car noise, is peppered throughout my thesis website. The Yellow Route preview on October 12 was less conducive to video. After my free pass on the Red Route, I assumed I’d have the opportunity to record on the Yellow. I was stopped, however, by a kind stage manager after I filmed Chapter 7 (again on iPhone). For the rest of the Route, I switched on my Voice Memos recorder and kept my phone in hand as I moved through the show, in and out of cars and through downtown. The audio I collected, while rough at points, captured the essence of the Yellow Route, and can be found worked into the radio piece and chapter pages on the site. 12 On the Green Route preview on October 24, worried I’d overstep my bounds, I planned only to casually record audio, which actually came out rather well. It led to the creation of my first radio piece. Perhaps the rules changed between those weeks, though, because I found that many other audience members took photos and video on that day. Zealous to capture every moment of Hopscotch, after seeing the Routes and the locations of each chapter, I jumped in my own car and went back out to sites of chapters I hadn’t been able to visually record as an audience member. Some locations were more easily found than others (Angel’s Point is tough), and of course, time was fleeting. But over the following weeks of stalking limos, hanging out in tunnels, and chasing the motorcycle from Chapter 19, I was able to photograph each chapter. For many performance days, I spent time at the Central Hub. Here is where I solidified the narrative in my head and filmed the audiences and Finale. The closing litany was gorgeous, and I felt desperate to catch and keep it. So I recorded the sound of the Hub on three separate occasions, I took photos one day, and video recorded on two other days. These media elements exist now on the “Central Hub” page of the thesis website. On the weekend of November 15, I abandoned all recording devices and took the opportunity to be present and enjoy my Finale ticket on the Green Route. The beauty of the experience was thrilling. I needed to know if the artists felt as moved by this production as I was. So with one weekend of performances remaining, I filmed interviews with four leading Luchas about how the 13 role impacted them. The resulting video entitled, “Muchas Luchas” is my first piece of video journalism. I added the elements and experiences that I collected in the Fall of 2015 to build the website, The Road to Hopscotch. The thesis project became an online coming-of-age documentary, reflecting the impact of Hopscotch on Los Angeles, the artists who created it, and myself. My aim was to build a digital home for Hopscotch to live online. I wanted to develop a space that is as multifaceted and creative as the opera itself. This document is both a written and digital collection of primary source material and my reactions. Every element of media—audio, video and photos were recorded on the road during my own Hopscotch experiences. The manuscript is a text iteration of the website, called The Road to Hopscotch, which includes transcripts, articles and contextual pieces. Each page of the site is represented by one section in the manuscript. Just as Hopscotch does not follow a linear arc, the progression of this project will be similarly “simultaneous.” There is no “right way” to navigate through The Road to Hopscotch. Each page describes a different aspect of the opera. The homepage is marked by the first section in the manuscript. It introduces Hopscotch and the website, using text, audio and social media elements to put forth the all the pieces of the Hopscotch puzzle, introducing the content that will be explored in the subsequent webpages. 14 The next section in the manuscript details the webpage entitled “Drive Through.” This second page of the website serves as Hopscotch “cliff notes” for online audiences. “Drive Through” includes character descriptions and a synopsis of the chronological Hopscotch narrative. The page also includes interactive story maps of the Red, Yellow and Green Routes with bite-sized media clips and descriptions of the chapters. The section entitled “Chapters,” is the crux of the project. The webpage is subtitled with a quote from the Hopscotch libretto, “…is all time simultaneous? A million universes precariously balanced?” Designed to reflect the nebulous nature of the narrative, the page features parallax scrolling and interactive images. When clicked, photos that represent each chapter will “pop-up” with audio or video recordings of the chapter with commentary by Artistic Director Yuval Sharon as he originally told the cast and crew at the first Hopscotch rehearsal. Here, I add text describing my own reaction to each chapter, adding an element of critique to the media reproduction. The “Chapters” page marks the beginning of my journalistic assessment. It intertwines documentary with diary, showing my Hopscotch experience alongside the art itself. If the “Chapters” page is a reflection of the Hopscotch experience out on the road, the page entitled, “The Central Hub: ‘A thousand streets lead into one great path, and no gate blocks your way,” is the online home for the Central Hub. A structure that is equal parts gallery space, theater, and city center, the custom-built Central Hub elevated the level to which a piece of art can infiltrate a city. 15 The “Behind the Wheel” page delves into the process of orchestrating Hopscotch with interviews with the creative team at The Industry. A collection of primary source material collected before, during and after Hopscotch ran, the section features full text interview transcripts and clickable photos that introduce the artistic masterminds responsible for the production. Finally, the section called “Under the Hood” delves into the minds of the artists that gave life to Hopscotch. I interviewed four of the 19 women who played Lucha about the impact of the role. Along with transcripts of their interviews, the page houses a video called “Muchas Luchas,” which creates a dialogue between the four about their common experience as the Hopscotch leading lady. The “Under the Hood” page also hosts the “Hopscotch Diaries,” an audio collection of phone interviews with an assortment of Hopscotch artists. 16 WEB: HOME PAGE The Road to Hopscotch: “…to find a center…” 3 Figure 1. Screen shot of top of homepage WEB INTRODUCTION In the fall of 2015, the mobile opera, Hopscotch, came to the streets of Los Angeles. Hopscotch was a mass collaboration of six librettists, six composers, and over 100 artists, musicians and collaborators from all walks. Together this web of artists created a work of public art that revolutionized the way Los Angeles thinks of opera. Small groups of audience members rode in one of 24 cars, each with a singer, actor, and/or musician performing one chapter of the story. The car stops at an LA location where another 3 Hopscotch. Jane Stephens Rosenthal et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 17 group of artists performs another chapter. Then, another car pulls up with different artists, ready to take the audience on the next leg of the narrative journey. And so on, and so on, using the streets of Los Angeles as a living set. At the end of the performance day, the 24 cars bring the audience and artists to the Central Hub for the finale. The Central Hub is a temporary structure built on the campus of SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture). ROUTE SYSTEM Figure 2. Screen shot of middle of homepage When purchasing tickets, audiences choose between the Red, Yellow, or Green Routes. One ticket buys a passenger seat on one of the three routes. Each route is a non-chronological, eight- chapter circuit portraying a version of the same story. The Red Route feels introspective, centered, mostly characterized by beginnings and romantic character portraits. Yellow is spatial, tumultuous, and tech-centric; it is most curious about the inner workings of the mind and how they relate to the environment. The Green Route is 18 metaphysical, wild. Thematically the Green Route revels in doorways and the consideration of what might have been. MARC LOWENSTEIN RADIO PIECE 4 RADIO TRANSCRIPT: Title: Tour of HOPSCOTCH with Musical Director Marc Lowenstein <<fade up motorcycle chapter 19 “HEY! YOUR TAILLIGHT IS OUT!” “’SCUSE ME?” “YOUR TAILLIGHT IS OUT”, fade down under next track>> This isn’t another driving moment in Los Angeles caught on tape. This is a scene from an opera called Hopscotch. <<fade up, motorcycle ambient sound, fade down>> Hopscotch is an immersive opera that takes place mostly on the road. As an audience member, you ride along with the singers and musicians. The performance plays out in a series of chapters inside cars and stopping at iconic locations across the city. For this chapter, I am in the backseat of a limo with three other audience members. There’s a character—an executive type. He’s having a conversation with the guy on the motorcycle in the lane next to us. The bike guy is mic’d, and his voice is streaming through the car’s speakers. << “YOU’RE A GLOOMY CONVERSATION PARTNER”>> Hopscotch is divided into three routes. One ticket gets you a passenger seat on either the Red route, the Yellow, or Green. Each route tells a different version of the same master narrative. 4 Lowenstein, Marc. "At the Central Hub with Marc Lowenstein." Interview by author. October 31, 2015. 19 Hopscotch Musical Director Marc Lowenstein says the routes reflect the cultural environment of LA. <<Marc Lowenstein: RED ROUTE DESCRIPTION>> <<duration: 17seconds>> “There is a different way to describe each one and it’s not necessarily intentional. It’s more determined by where they are. The red route goes sort of through Southern LA, Boyle Heights- ish, and has a lot of Mexican Heritage to it, and there is a quinceañera scene.” <<fade in, song from chapter 4, fade down>> <<ML: YELLOW ROUTE QUOTE>> <<duration: 15 seonds>> “The yellow route is all geographically centered around downtown. It’s more introspective. There’s a dream scene, there’s a psychological experiment scene, there’s all sorts of memory scenes within this downtown setting.” <<fade in, song from chapter 25, fade down>> This is Chapter 25 on the yellow route. We’re following the character as she sort of dreamily walks through the Bradbury Building on Third and Broadway. <<ML: YELLOW ROUTE QUOTE>> <<duration: 11sec>> “The green route is a little wilder because it takes place out in nature. It’s up in Elysian Park and down by the LA river, so the scenes tend to be a little crazier, I don’t quite know how to describe it.” 20 <<fade in, song from chapter 26, fade down under next track>> To give you an idea: the motorcycle chapter is on the green route as we headed from Riverside drive up into Elysian Park. <<fade in, ambient sound from the Central Hub, fade down under next track>> <<ML: HUB QUOTE>> <<duration: 6 seconds>> “So we’re standing here in the Central Hub. It’s a purpose-filled structure designed by someone from SCI-Arc.” That’s the Southern California Institute of Architecture in downtown LA. <<ML: HUB QUOTE>> <<duration: 8 seconds>> “We’re here. There are 24 screens that are live-streaming the scenes as they happen around LA. You can stand, program your headphones to listen to any one of them or look and watch.” <<fade in, finale music, fade down under next track>> Anyone, ticket or not, can come to the hub during the shows to watch all chapters live-streamed as they’re happening simultaneously around the city. <<ML: on LOS ANGELES>> <<duration: 21 seconds>> “I don’t think we could do this production anywhere else. One thing, the mobility that LA is definitely about cars and searching for a center and finding it within to a certain extent. It’s a very different experience in the arts here than in other cities right now. This is LA’s time. It’s a renaissance and a lot of people are on board, and it’s exciting.” 21 The Hub will be free for the public. The Industry hopes the option of seeing the opera free of charge will appeal to new audiences. Lowenstein is confident that Los Angeles is ready. ANIMATIONS 5 : Figure 3. Screen shot of bottom of homepage In addition to the 24 live chapters, Hopscotch audiences were invited to delve deeper into the story with ten animated chapters. Designed by a team of six animators to round out the narrative, The Industry released the animated chapters in the weeks before Hopscotch opening day to familiarize audiences with the characters. Audience members who watched the animations ahead of time had a firmer grip on the story’s trajectory when seeing the show live. Each performance day, the animated chapters were shown at the Central Hub. 5 "Hopscotch Opera." Hopscotch. Accessed March 07, 2016. http://hopscotchopera.com/. 22 Music by Gnarwhallaby. Audio produced and mixed by Lewis Pesacov, engineered by James Hurwitz and Lewis Pesacov, assisted by Christopher Knollmeyer. Musical Direction by Marc Lowenstein. 23 WEB: PAGE 2 Drive Through: Hopscotch at a glance Characters: Figure 4. Screen Shot of top of Drive Through page Lucha: The central figure of Hopscotch, and a puppeteer from Boyle Heights. On the day after her quinceañera, Lucha’s parents were killed in a car crash. Left orphaned, she spends her life searching for her identity. Jameson: A scientist from Connecticut who works at JPL. He is haunted by the memory of a deer running into the road in front of his motorcycle. His near-death experience has made him obsessed with the inner workings of the mind. Orlando: A Mexican-American artist who collaborates with Lucha on creative projects. He struggles with the death of his wife, Sarita, but eventually falls in love again. 24 A WORD FROM COSTUME DESIGNER, ANN CLOSS-FARLEY 6 : Figure 5. Screen shot of middle of Drive Through page Ann Closs-Farley is an acclaimed costume designer best known for her colorful work on The Pee-Wee Herman Broadway Show, 99-Cent Only Show and calendar, and now Hopscotch. “We decided color would be [the best way] to describe who our characters are amongst the variables. Lucha would be yellow as the sun. Joy. It’s a color that holds its self present all day. This is a day show, so we're doing a vibrant yellow for her. Orlando is brown, of the earth. Jameson is black and white as if it is a distant, noir character. Then we have our musicians in blue, which are of the sky, and of the thing that are very California.” --Ann Closs-Farley Synopsis: 6 Closs-Farley, Ann, and Kate Bergh. "Hopscotch Costume Designers." Interview by author. September 21, 2015. 25 Lucha has just left a meeting with Orlando, her creative partner, feeling enormously successful about the work they’re doing. Distracted, she crashes her car into a motorcycle driven by Jameson. She gives him her information on the back of a flier for her upcoming show, and Jameson, smitten with Lucha, goes to her rehearsal, a puppet production of Orpheus and Eurydice. They begin to date, going to places like Hollenbeck Park and Angel’s Point, but Jameson struggles to cope with his intense feelings for Lucha, using the language of science to communicate instead. When they marry, Lucha gives Jameson a red notebook in which to write his deepest thoughts. The gift has a strange effect on Jameson, who delves further into his work developing brain-sensing technology to explore his theories about the concept of the multi-verse. Feeling neglected by her husband, Lucha grows despondent and loses interest in her art. She receives a mysterious phone call from a person who seems to know her very well. The bewildering phone call motivates her to seek the help of a fortune teller. Meanwhile, Orlando’s wife, Sarita, dies, and Lucha is unable to comfort Orlando. He leaves for Paris to heal. Jameson’s experiments drive him to a nervous breakdown. Without a word, he disappears, lost to the city streets. Lucha is distraught. She searches everywhere for Jameson, looking in all the places they ever went together. She finds one of the brain-sensing headbands from his experiment, and puts it on. It sends her into a psychotic trip, deep into the recesses of her mind. In a subconscious vision, she sees a nightmare-like image of Jameson and another woman. When she breaks out of her trance, she feels more like herself. Orlando returns from Paris, and they get married. Lucha eventually accepts that she will never know what happened to Jameson, and she finally feels peaceful. Her life goes on, she and 26 Orlando grow old, and one day she finds herself in a room with a blue rotary phone. Picking up the receiver, she knows just who to call. STORY MAPS: Hopscotch is the creation of Artistic Director Yuval Sharon and his team at The Industry, the revolutionary opera company that brought Invisibles Cities to Union Station in 2013. Hopscotch is an operatic collaboration by six composers, including Hopscotch Musical Director Marc Lowenstein, Veronika Krausas, Ellen Reid, Andrew McIntosh, David Rosenboom and Andrew Norman. They realized early on that Hopscotch would be a disorienting experience and embraced a lack of certain control. In addition to the diverse, site-specific backdrops that set each scene, the opera’s story arc is nonlinear–chapters play out in no particular order. These maps with original audio, video and photography by Corinne DeWitt are meant to record the Hopscotch experience in order to provide a hint, a taste, a Proustian memory of things past for those who saw it and to give those who cannot see it an entry point for knowing what happened. These are a journalism record. Text supplied in these Red, Yellow and Green Maps about the discrete chapters is by Yuval Sharon, verbatim, as told at the first rehearsal for cast and crew in October 7 . 7 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 27 Red Route: Figure 6. Screen shot of Red Route story map Yellow Route: Figure 7. Screen shot of Yellow Route story map 28 Green Route: Figure 8. Screen shot of Green Route story map 29 WEB: PAGE 3 On the Road: Live Chapters “…a billion universes, precariously balanced…” 8 All moments in Hopscotch exist simultaneously. Individually, each chapter is a complete experience, a world, vivid memories that are rich with color and sound. Ten animated chapters (link to embeds on “Drive Through” page) together with vignettes intertwine, integral pieces in the narrative fabric. Click on the photos to experience the sights and sounds of each live chapter along with words from Artistic Director Yuval Sharon—his words come from the first Hopscotch rehearsal in which he shared his vision with the cast and crew (link to Invocation on “Behind the Wheel” page). Additional commentary by documentarian Corinne DeWitt Figure 9. Screen shot of Chapters page 8 Hopscotch. Tom Jacobson et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 30 CHAPTER 2: THE CRASH Lucha: Jane Stephens Rosenthal Jameson: Jason Winfield Harpist: Phillip King Text by Jane Stephens Rosenthal Music by Phillip King Motorcycle sculpture by Danny Gonzalez and Manny Torres “Lucha and Jameson are going to be outside of the car and the motorcycle, and they’re going to be having a scene. The audience is going to be inside a limo doing donuts around them. They’ll see the crash from 360 degrees…They’re going to be wearing microphones, and we’ll hear their voices over the speakers in the car. Inside the car is a musician, Philip King. He is a beat box artist, and he is playing a cupid character. You might have seen him. If you’ve seen him, you never forget. He’ll be in the car with you, improvising on harp as a kind of cupid character for these two characters.” 9 –Y.S. CD: To crawl into the backseat of a limo and come knee-to-knee with Phillip King was one of the most exhilarating moments on the Red Route. His improvised harp+beatbox music scores the scene unfolding outside the car windows. King’s music is romantic in a wistful, way. It has an edge in it’s tone like an omniscient narrator who recounts a love story with a twinge of sadness. 9 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 31 “The Crash” shows how Hopscotch explores the internal/external dynamic of the driver’s life inside a car as it relates to the surroundings. Figure 10. Screen shot of Chapter 2 modal CHAPTER 4: LUCHA'S QUINCEAÑERA SONG Young Lucha: Angel Ng/Natasha Sanchez Arrangements and Guitar and Requinto Jarocho: Jerónimo Rajchenberg, Guitar Quinta Colorada: Alfredo López Leona: Russell Kennedy Music by David Rosenboom, Text by Janine Salinas Schoenberg "Chapter 4 is not the moment of that crash, but it is the moment just before. It is the day of Lucha’s quinceañera. [Lucha] will be singing a very beautiful song that David [Rosenboom] 32 wrote-- this really beautiful song that you can’t quite call mariachi...Well, I'm not sure exactly what to call it. It’s a song about that ritual transformation that is the quinceañera, that moves [the] change from girl into womanhood." 10 -Y.S. CD: “Porque ahora soy una mujer,” says 15-year-old Lucha 11 . Natasha Sanchez sings about her family and her coming-of-age with an authentic innocence, accompanied by a series of musicians in traditional mariachi garb. Chapter 4 takes place mostly in a car that drives between Hollenbeck Park and Mariachi Plaza. The streets of Boyle Heights through the car windows are like a home video scored by Lucha’s wistful song. I get a sense of her experience growing up as a Mexican-American in Los Angeles. Figure 11. Screen shot of Chapter 4 modal 10 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 11 Hopscotch. By Janine Salinas Schoenberg et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 33 CHAPTER 6: JAMESON PORTRAIT Music by Andrew Norman Percussion: Ray McNamara/MB Gordy “This one, for Jameson, is going to show the split. He goes inside the car and outside the car. The percussionist is inside the car, and outside the car will be projections…As we drive through the second or third street tunnel, you'll see him riding his own motorcycle, both inside and outside the car.” 12 -Y.S. CD: Chapter 6 invites audiences into a contemplative headspace. We’re seated in a sparsely dressed limo with only one man, Jameson, who drums on water glasses and plastic car siding. He percusses with alternating intensity and trepidation as if he were testing the sounds, thinking, experimenting. Outside the car, a projector mounted on top of the limo flashes images of a running deer on the dark walls of the 2 nd Street tunnel in downtown, Los Angeles. The deer, as revealed in the animated chapter 5, represents a defining moment in Jameson’s past. In the 3 rd Street tunnel, we see projected images of Jameson as he is now, riding his motorcycle through a swarm of numbers and equations that seem to have escaped his from brain. 12 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 34 Figure 12. Screen shot of Chapter 6 modal CHAPTER 7: THE REUNION Lucha: Odeya Nini Orlando: Maximiliano Torandell Jameson: Jameson Cherilus Music by Odeya Nini Text by Jane Stephens Rosenthal "[Jameson] walks into this really beautiful warehouse in the Arts District, and he's instantly transformed by what he sees. Orlando is an aerialist who's floating through the space; Lucha [has] this beautiful life-sized puppet of Orpheus. They're telling the story of Orpheus and 35 Eurydice. He instantly sees what kind of woman she is and is instantly drawn to her even more. It actually turns into, I think, a very sweet scene between Jameson and Lucha. Lucha also says that, in her version of the Orpheus and Eurydice story, Orpheus succeeds in bringing Eurydice out of the underworld because she wants to create art that is aspirational…She wants to say that this is a story about transcending our weaknesses, right? It’s so irresistible to Jameson." 13 -Y.S. CD: This is the only instance in all of Hopscotch that we see Lucha through Jameson’s eyes. Audiences walk with him as he gathers his courage to enter her airy studio. We stand with Jameson as he watches her and Orlando move through shafts of colorful light. Together, we are hypnotized by the soundscape, so we are startled by the crash of his motorcycle helmet dropping to the wood floor. We are inspired by Lucha’s creativity, and seeing his perspective makes us like him too. 13 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 36 Figure 13. Screen shot of Chapter 7 modal CHAPTER 8: FIRST KISS Lucha: Sarah Beaty Jameson: Victor Mazzone, Roller skater: Stephanie Williams, Saxophone: Logan Hone Tuba: Stefan Kac, Cajón: Linnea Sablosky, Accordion: Isaac Schankler, Percussionist: TJ Troy Music by Marc Lowenstein Text by Erin Young 37 "This is Lucha and Jameson starting to fall in love. They take this very crazy, very beautiful walk in Hollenbeck Park. As they’re walking, you almost start to hear monologues over [the music]. You hear, 'I wonder, is this for real? What’s happening?' It seems there’s music happening all around them." 14 -Y.S. CD: Executive Director Elizabeth Cline suspects that composer Marc Lowenstein wrote this chapter as a love letter to his wife. 15 Emerging from the dark interior of a limo into a scene of sunshine, roller skates and jaunty accordion music makes it easy to imagine Hollenbeck Park as the scene for a date. The aesthetic of musicians dressed in bright colors and hats, a beatnik and an old-timey ice cream vendor posits Hopscotch in another era. Suddenly I realize that I don’t know in which time period Hopscotch is set, but the story and the characters are timeless. Lucha and Jameson’s first kiss took place in an age characterized by idealism, romance and tubas. 14 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 15 Cline, Elizabeth. "Hopscotch in Review." Interview by author. January 26, 2016. 38 Figure 14. Screen shot of Chapter 8 modal CHAPTER 9: ANGEL’S POINT Lucha: Lauren Davis Jameson: Jessica Mirshak Saxophones: Andrew Conrad, Neelamjit Dhillon, Brian Walsh, Damon Zick Music by Andrew McIntosh Text by Sarah LaBrie Photo by Eva Soltes “This is actually a really beautiful nod to operatic vision; this scene is played by two women. They’re going to be in the car with a very sexy instrument, like a saxophone...The saxophone player will join three other saxophone players at a beautiful sculpture called Angel’s Point in Elysian Park, where you get this incredible view of all downtown…The idea that the one 39 saxophone player joins this union of saxophone players for a brief quartet, I think, is going to be really beautiful…When you hear music as beautiful--it is really sublime music.” CD: Inside the car, Lucha and Jameson sing a duet reminiscent of a fluttering springtime orchestral aria as they move towards their first sexual encounter. Outside the limo, the grassy brown hills of Elysian Park zoom by. The lovers are accompanied by a [sex]ophone, who leads us out of the car, down a dusty path to Angel’s Point where panoramic views of Los Angeles are made physically intense by sound vibrations from the saxophone quartet that encircle us. This chapter thrills with new discoveries that are scenic, sonic and sensual. Figure 15. Screen shot of Chapter 9 modal CHAPTER 11: THE FLOATING NEBULA Lucha: Alisa Guardiola Jameson: Micaela Taylor 40 Angel: Quayla Bramble Recording: Matt Cook, Jeff Curtin, Zachary Crumrine, Justin Asher, featuring members of the Trinity Youth Chorus, NYC: Erica D’Acona, Katie Fountain, Jalene Lipowitz, Marcella Roy, Elisa Sikula, Josie Zenger Music by Ellen Reid Text by Mandy Kahn "In a weird coincidence, [Chapter 11] is also on the green route, also played by two women. An amazing coincidence, that it happened, but I love that. The two of them will play the two characters moving through the space, moving to another part of the [scene] where there’s a sculpture of a motorcycle…and Lucha hugging Jameson, sitting on a motorcycle with Jameson holding her, and a projection on them is driving through the universe. Around you is an 8- channel sound installation…the sound is a children’s choir. [It is] going to be a scene where the audience is invited to just kind of wander in that space." 16 -Y.S. CD: Sharon originally envisioned that “The Floating Nebula” would take place in a darkened warehouse, but during the production process, it was moved outdoors to Los Angeles State Historic Park. I didn’t expect to find an otherworldly nebula of sound and movement under a rail bridge in Chinatown, but standing in the middle of the ring of speakers as the Metro Gold Line roared over head was visceral. In this iteration, Lucha and Jameson are dancers. They move 16 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 41 slowly, exploring each other and their space. An angel figure with golden wings encircles them and us. Figure 16. Screen shot of Chapter 11 modal CHAPTER 12: WEDDING Lucha: Ashley Allen Jameson: Jon Keenan/Landon Shaw II Guitar: Nicholas Deyoe Music by Andrew McIntosh Text by Sarah LaBrie and Janine Salinas Schoenberg "[Lucha] gives Jameson a red notebook. This red notebook is meant to be where he writes all things, inner thoughts. Something about getting this red notebook transforms him instantly. He starts to really think what he's been doing with his life is kind of a waste, and what he really 42 needs to be doing is trying to explore outer rings. He basically says, ‘What’s the point of exploring the universe when we don’t even know what’s happening right up here?’ It is a big shift for the character." 17 -Y.S. CD: Is it the disintegrating reverberations that make a slowly plucked electric guitar so haunting? In the back of the limo outside Los Angeles City Hall, Guitarist Nicholas Deyoe looms forebodingly, picking the strings as we wait for Lucha and Jameson. When they climb in, Lucha is exuberant in the moments after their wedding, but she fades into the background as we zoom in on Jameson’s precarious headspace. “Strange how a thought can send you reeling,” he muses, completely derailed by the simple gift of the red notebook, a place to contain his thoughts 18 . 17 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 18 Hopscotch. By Sarah LaBrie, and Janine Salinas Schoenberg, et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 43 Figure 17. Screen shot of Chapter 12 modal CHAPTER 14: THE PHONE CALL, PART 1 Lucha: Maria Elena Altany Music by Marc Lowenstein Text by Mandy Kahn Special Thanks to Lewis Pesacov "We see Lucha, who is played by Maria Elena Altany. She hears on the phone a very mysterious voice, and she can’t quite tell what the voice is even trying to say. All she hears is, ‘A thousand streets lead to one great into one great path, and no gate blocks your way.’ She goes, ‘What, what 44 could that mean?’ Also, this other voice on the line knows a lot about her. It’s very creepy, so if you're in the car with Maria in Chapter 14, it is a very scary scene in some ways." 19 -Y.S. CD: I saw the Red Route of Hopscotch on its first performance preview day, October 4. Chapter 14 was the first limo I climbed into. I had imagined that riding in the backseat of a limo with an opera singer may be a self-conscious experience, but becoming a voyeur into Lucha’s troubled phone call felt surprisingly natural. Watching Altany was cinematic-- her face, a close up of Lucha’s vulnerability. The ten-minute aria was over in an instant. Altany was utterly captivating. Not even the seat-shuffling of my car mates could break the spell of her song. It’s beautiful to think (now) that even though only the Red Route was running that day, in some alternate universe in which time exists simultaneously, the older Lucha was there to make the phone call. 19 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 45 Figure 18. Screen shot of Chapter 14 modal CHAPTER 15: A FORTUNE Lucha: Justine Aronson Fortune Teller: Julia Aks Violin: Madeline Falcone Lovers: Kristen Choi and Ariel Pisturino Flute: Sarah Wass and Christine Tavolacci Text by Tom Jacobson Music by Veronika Krausas "Lucha pulls the Lovers’ [card], and when she pulls the Lovers,’ the card sort of springs to life. [We will] see the two lovers roaming around, singing this duet…So she pulls another card, and the card is Death. It is not a death as bad as you think-- it is a death that is a rebirth. But again, very, very mysterious…It haunts her…Death gives her a music box, very importantly, and she plays this music box, and we see her really in kind of a crisis moment in her own life, wondering, 'What’s the next step in my life? I have no idea where my life is going.'" 20 —Y.S. CD: Trying to sort out the mysterious phone call from (unbeknownst to her) her older self, Lucha visit’s a fortune teller in Chinatown Plaza. The Death character that Sharon referenced appears to have been edited in the production process, but the musicians that accompany Lucha through her 20 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 46 Chinatown odyssey take on a macabre presence. The surreal imagery of the Lovers tarot cards causes Lucha to ask, “Is all time simultaneous? A billion universes precariously balanced…” 21 In her uncertainty, she considers a world in which the choices she makes and the choices she doesn’t make become fractals, spider-ing out into a series of alternate realities that might have been. In her aria, Justine Aronson accompanies herself on a custom-made toy music box that plays Veronika Krausas’ original composition. Figure 19. Screen shot of Chapter 15 modal CHAPTER 17: ORLANDO’S FAREWELL Orlando: Timur Bekbosunov/Orson Van Gay II Sarita: Kirsten Ashley Wiest and Carrie Mikuls, 21 Hopscotch. By Tom Jacobson et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 47 Violas: Cassia Streb and Lauren Baba Guitar: Omar Torrez Music by Veronika Krausas Text by Janine Salinas Schoenberg "We see [Orlando] saying goodbye to LA. We see him say goodbye to his wife one last time. It is a drive through Evergreen Cemetery, where we see visions of Sarita, his wife, dotted along the landscape…It is a very morbid, lovely scene of farewell. And the last moment of the scene is with the car totally empty and a piece of music playing on the speakers as he drives throughout the cemetery. So the last two to three minutes are a very isolating, a lonely moment, I think. I think it'll be a very powerful one." 22 -Y.S. CD: This was my first encounter with Orlando, but even without familiarity with his character, his despair was palpable. When Sarita, his wife who was dressed in beautiful Dia de los Muertos garb, leaves the car in Evergreen Cemetery and disappears amongst the tombstones, the symbolism is clear: Orlando’s love is gone, and he feels he must leave too. This chapter is most related to Julio Cortázar’s nominative novel, Rayuela. This opera was not based on Cortázar’s narrative, but Hopscotch’s Orlando character was inspired by the book, which also invited readers into a nonlinear narrative with chapters to be read out of order. 22 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 48 Figure 20. Screen shot of Chapter 17 modal CHAPTER 18: INTERLUDE (Carwash) Mother: Victoria Fox Father: Bobby Gutierrez Tuba: Brandon Davis Bass: Ben Finley Music by Veronika Krausas Text by Guy Debord Electronic soundtrack by Adam Borecki "Chapter 18 is an interlude. It is kind of the halfway point in the story, kind of an intermission in a way. We enter into an RV, and projected on the windows, the RV is moving through a carwash at a very slowed down rate, at a 25mph rate. Inside the RV, it is like we’re transported back into 49 the 50s. In the 50s, we see sort of a marital scene. The father is reading text by Guy Debord, and the mother is there singing the text by Guy Debord in French. It is kind of an intellectual interlude, let's put it that way." 23 -Y.S. CD: In an Airstream trailer in the hills of Elysian Park, there’s no Lucha or Jameson or Orlando in sight. Instead, Chapter 18 features a mother figure sings while she chops real vegetables. She drops them methodically into simmering soup while the father in a smoking jacket reads aloud from a book of philosophy. The text is the work of French theorist Guy Debord, whose ideas about the psycho-geography of a city inspired the bulk of Hopscotch themes. The sights, smells and sounds of the trailer are reminiscent of experimental musician John Cage’s 1962 composition O’O, in which the composer chops vegetables and makes them into juice. Cage was known for creating music by curating sounds of his environment, a phenomenon also embraced throughout many Hopscotch locations. 23 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 50 Figure 21. Screen shot of Chapter 18 modal CHAPTER 19: PASSENGERS Jameson: Stephen Beitler/Themba Alleyne Man in Car: Peter Howard Recording: Lewis Pesacov, Garret Ray, Corey Fogel, Jonah Levy, Alison Bjorkedal, Andrew McIntosh Music by Lewis Pesacov Text by Elizabeth Cline and Yuval Sharon, additional text by Sarah LaBrie "In this scene, we see Jameson racing to this experiment…He's late. He's lost his way on his motorcycle, and he suddenly starts to get into a conversation with a man in a limousine, and the two of them first begin to have a kind of road rage. Before you know it, it becomes very metaphysical between [them, with] two total[y] different points of view... At the very end 51 Jameson, gives the man in the limo the red notebook. That is one of the last times you see the red notebook." 24 -Y.S. CD: The thrill of realizing Jameson is driving the real motorcycle alongside the limo was surely one of the highlights of Hopscotch. We see Jameson from the inside of the car, sharing the perspective of the executive inside. In a callback to the memories explored in Chapters 5 (animated) and 6, he wears a deer decal on his helmet. Jameson is mic’d, so his voice streams in through the car speakers. Once the adrenaline subsides, I settled in and listened to their conversation, which has progressed from a raging outburst to a dialogue about the way we travel, and how that changes our perception of the city. The bike revs frighteningly close to the car, and I remember the quote Sharon used at the first Hopscotch rehearsal, “"If there isn't the potential to be a disaster is not art." 25 24 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 25 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 52 Figure 22. Screen shot of Chapter 19 modal CHAPTER 20: THE EXPERIMENT Jameson: David Castillo Lab Assistant: Clayton Farris Boatman: Jonathan Cebreros Recorded voices: Marja Liisa Kay Music by David Rosenboom Text by Erin Young Brain-sensing headbands by InteraXon for Muse “The audience will put these headbands on, and the audiences’ responses to the questions that Jameson is going to ask will trigger certain musical events. Every performance of this [chapter] 53 is going to be radically different. It reaches such a frenzy that Jameson basically has a mental breakdown in the car. On the street, he sees this mythical figure of a boatman. The boatman basically rips him out of the car and that’s how the scene ends…I'm so excited.” 26 -Y.S. CD: A busy street corner in downtown Los Angeles sets the frenetic tone for Chapter 20. We (audience members) enter the car and become participants in Doctor Jameson’s neurological experiment. He gathers data from brain-sensing headbands that were given to us by the spiral- eyed lab assistant. The data generates music from our brain waves. At the end of the experiment, a man pulls Jameson from the car and chases him down the street. He’s a boatman figure, reminiscent of the gatekeeper of Hades in the Orpheus story. He wears a Lucha Libre mask, referencing a distorted nightmare version of the woman Jameson loves. Jameson twitches constantly and rubs his face—I wonder if the character has a substance abuse problem. When the chapter plays from Jameson’s perspective (rather than Lucha and Jameson together), his frenzied headspace is apparent. Recalling the Jameson chapters makes his disappearance and troublesome fate seem fathomable. 26 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 54 Figure 23. Screen shot of Chapter 20 modal CHAPTER 22: DESPAIR Lucha: Laura Bohn and Sharon Kim Trumpets: David Aguila, Lisa Edelman, Lucas Lipari-Mayer, Mona Seda Music by Ellen Reid Text by Mandy Kahn Recording: Doug Balliett, Jillian Risigari-Gai, Evan Honse Produced and recorded by Ellen Reid “This is where Lucha's sense of loss is at it's heaviest, at it's biggest. This is really sort of a cry of despair. In this chapter, she's literally split into two. There are two Luchas in this chapter as she drives the street corner over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, looking in vain for where Jameson could be. There’s a final part of the aria that takes place outside the car-- Lucha 55 outside the car singing to the audience inside the car. It’s a really haunting scene that [composer Ellen Reid] really built around the idea of Doppler effects. I think it’s going to be really powerful.” 27 -Y.S. CD: Distraught over Jameson’s inexplicable disappearance, Lucha has a violent out-of-body experience in the claustrophobic space in the back of the car. We see two Luchas wrestle with each other, grappling with the idea that Orpheus is “lucky.” Placing herself in Orpheus’ position, the two Luchas lament in unison, “When you went to Hades, your Eurydice was there.” 28 The chord is sour and crazed, and the car drives in circles searching for him. Outside the car a cluster of trumpets foreshadows the gatekeepers at the River Styx in Chapter 26. 27 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 28 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 56 Figure 24. Screen shot of Chapter 22 modal CHAPTER 24: THE RED NOTEBOOK Music by Andrew McIntosh Text by Sarah LaBrie Horn: Allen Fogle, Soprano: Estelí Gomez Percussion/Violin/Viola: Andrew McIntosh Recording by Nick Tipp, Scott Worthington, mixed by Lewis Pesacov and Andrew McIntosh, mastered by Justin DeHart "[Chapter 24] is a soundscape in a car that is entirely devoid of human performers. There’s not a single live person in the car in these 10 minutes, and all the windows are blackened out. This one might be the scariest actually. For 10 minutes, you really won’t know where you’re going at all. 57 You'll hear Andrew [McIntosh's] very, very powerful, beautiful electronic soundscape with the voice of Lucha reading lines by Jameson floating over the speakers." 29 -Y.S. CD: The car is dark, empty save for us audience members and Jameson’s red notebook. The notebook rides on the seat along side us, an ominous passenger. We had the option to open the notebook for a little glowing red light if the blackness felt overwhelming, but to keep it closed emphasized the void in Lucha’s mind as she grapples with the devastating loss of her husband. The soundscape that creeps through the car speakers is a mix of vibrating bass and Lucha’s voice wailing Jameson’s words from their wedding day: “Strange how a thought can send you reeling…” 30 Figure 25. Screen shot of Chapter 24 modal 29 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 30 Hopscotch. By Sarah LaBrie et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 58 CHAPTER 25: THE OTHER WOMAN Lucha: Delaram Kamereh Lady in Red: Brianna Seamster Jameson: Trevor Davis/Jeremy Hahn Saxophone: Sam Gendel Guitar: Vikram Devasthali Double Brass: Patrick Taylor Drums: Kevin Yokota Ate9 dANCE cOMPANY: Sarah Butler, Ariana Daub, Rebecah Goldstone, Thibaut Eiferman, Genna Moroni Music by Veronika Krausas Text by Tom Jacobson "Lucha is wandering this incredibly beautiful building, and this kind of hellish figure is sort of all around all the different layers. She sees Jameson basically being ripped into the past, basically taken away from her and into a kind of a noir-ish 1940s nightmare. It has a jazz component to it. It has an improvisational component to it. It's going to be like floating through this extremely beautiful building. It's going to be pretty unforgettable, I think, and made even more unforgettable by the fact that this is where the Ate9 dancers will be creating the environment." 31 - Y.S. 31 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 59 CD: I run sometimes in my dreams. And running in dreams always feels desperately ineffectual. Whatever I’m chasing is always one step out of reach-- gravity’s pull is too heavy. In Chapter 25, Lucha has searched all over Los Angeles for Jameson. After his brain-sensing headband sends her into a psychotic trance, we find her in the Bradbury Building, dazed and bereft. Her aria begins, “Is this a dream, looking backward, looking forward, precariously balanced, ready to fall forward or back…” 32 Following her through the Bradbury Building as she descends into her nightmarish sub-conscious--we were always a step behind Jameson (or the specter version of him) who pursues a seductress in a long red dress. Lucha’s aria is sometimes hysterical, sometimes resigned. Soprano Delaram Kamareh’s clear voice contrasts with jazzy and urgent music. We move slowly, trying not to tumble down the stairs. Dancers block the way with angular, spastic movements, or laid out like casualties along the hallways. Figure 26. Screen shot of Chapter 25 modal 32 Hopscotch. By Tom Jacobson et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 60 CHAPTER 26: HADES Lucha: Rebekah Barton Jameson: Nicholas LaGesse Father: Babatunde Akimboboye/James Hayden Boatman: Patrick Blackwell River Voices: Jennifer Weiss, Micaela Tobin, Katarzyna Sadej Trumpets: Sarah Reid, Patrick Hoff, Aaron Smith Percussion: Cory Hills, Nick Terry, Justin DeHart Music by David Rosenboom Text by Erin Young Photo by Eva Soltes "Chapter 26 is really the climax of the nightmare, arriving at the River Styx, at the river of hell where Lucha tries to rescue Jameson. She sees the boatman-- the boatman first forbids her to pass. This is the most Orpheus scene of all. A trio of furies are keeping her at bay. She sees Jameson. She tries to bring Jameson back from hell, and the ghost of her father basically sends her away. It is a nightmarish scene surrounded by a lot of electronic music, percussion. It is our biggest vista, the LA river- the concrete bed of the LA river, the Bowtie Parcel. It is going to be incredible and a great challenge for everybody." 33 -Y.S. 33 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 61 CD: I am reasonably sure no opera in history has put audience members and a soprano into an open-top jeep and off-roaded them down to a river’s edge before. The jeep navigates crevasses and gravel while Lucha stands above us in the back, wind in her hair, humming her quinceañera song, “Porque ahora soy una mujer” from Chapter 4, elegantly tying the moments of her life together. 34 She has a sense of calm about her as if she readying for battle. In homage to the Orpheus myth, the Bowtie Parcel of the LA River was transformed into the River Styx where the boatman and furies guarded the gate to Hades. Jameson walks below, tattered and limping, and though Lucha throws a rope and rappels down the bank, she cannot reach him. Her father blocks her way. “It’s not your time,” he says, and she is forced to leave Jameson in the underworld. Figure 27. Screen shot of Chapter 26 modal 34 Hopscotch. By Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and Erin Young et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 62 CHAPTER 28: LUCHA AND ORLANDO IN LOVE Lucha: Michelle Shocked Orlando: Paul Berkolds Music by Michelle Shocked Text by Jane Stephens Rosenthal “Orlando and Lucha [are] now in love, and they’re finding themselves in synch with each other. Those of you who have read the book Love in the Time of Cholera, [about] love not always necessarily working the first time, but coming around [the second time]...Even [with] age. [On their ride, they remember] the ages from when they were first meeting at 20, to where they are at this stage of their lives.” 35 -Y.S. CD: Reminiscent of the love song at Hollenbeck Park, again accordion music marks romance for Lucha. Years have passed, and we see Lucha and Orlando at peace. The couple before us in the car is mature, and something about their love feels solid and spirited. It lacks the fervor of the Lucha+Jameson pairing. The music is a departure from other arias, likely because it was the only piece written and performed by folk musician Michelle Shocked as Lucha, and accompanied by Paul Berkolds as Orlando. The song sounds at first like the happy montage at the end of a movie, then transitions to a more retrospective lilt. Lucha reminds me again of her Red Route self, a Mexican-American with a grip on her identity as an artist and woman. At one moment in the 35 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 63 piece, the accordion fades, and Lucha lets out a series of sage moans. Suddenly I realize that although she is now happily married, she still feels the sadness of her past. Figure 28. Screen shot of Chapter 28 modal CHAPTER 29: LUCHA PORTRAIT Flute: Erin McKibben Music by Andrew Norman Text by Yuval Sharon Voice-Over by Ashley Elizabeth Allen "Chapter 29 is a Lucha portrait, one of Andrew Norman's portrait’s. This is for one instrumentalist, Erin McKibben on flute. She will definitely be wearing a safety belt for this one. 64 This one is on a rocky road, basically a very natural environment. Really exciting. A little scary… also scary." 36 -Y.S. CD: Sharon originally thought the jeep element from Hades would be in Chapter 29, but I’m not sure how this Lucha, a flautist, would have been able to play on those lurching dips. Instead we ride with Lucha in the car between The Floating Nebula chapter and Hades. Both times I saw the Green Route, technical difficulties muted the spoken voice-over that was meant to be heard through the car speakers. So the experience became a contemplative, quiet chapter. The melody is pure and wistful. I thought it was gorgeous later when I recognized it at the Finale at the Central Hub, where, layered with music from the Jameson and Orlando portraits, it becomes a complete composition. Figure 29. Screen shot of Chapter 29 modal 36 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 65 CHAPTER 31: ORFEO Lucha: Jennifer Lindsay Orfeo: James Onstad Violins: Eric KM Clark, Mona Tian Text by Tom Jacobson Music by Marc Lowenstein Photo by Eva Soltes "Lucha remembers going to the opera with Jameson. Jameson is a big opera fan, as we find out in the Hollenbeck Park scene. He loves Monteverdi's Orfeo; it is his favorite opera. So, she remembers going to see it, not necessarily understanding anything about it, but being really haunted by the beautiful sound of the voice of the tenor singing the famous aria, Possente Spirito, which is the lament to the boatman…Marc [Lowenstein] wrote this really beautiful duet for them in which their voices intermingle in Monteverdi, and the new music will weave in together in an unbelievably beautiful and haunting [way] in this big, empty theater." 37 -Y.S. CD: According to the chronological narrative, at this point in her life, Lucha has remarried Orlando. She’s happy with him, but the memory of Jameson remains. Remembering how Jameson loved going to the opera, she looks out over the beautiful old theater and sees a gilded tenor on stage singing the famous aria from Monteverdi’s Orfeo. I wonder if the tenor is a construct of her memory. I’m sure it’s purely coincidental that the Million Dollar Theater sits 37 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 66 exactly across the street from the Bradbury Building that Lucha haunted in her despair. It’s interesting to associate Lucha’s descent into her subconscious in Chapter 25 with this seeming hallucination in her aria here. She looks down at her distant duet-partner on stage, and I start to believe Lucha is singing along with a song in her head, changing the words to Possente Spirito to reflect her memories in Hollenbeck Park. Figure 30. Screen shot of Chapter 31 modal CHAPTER 32: ORLANDO PORTRAIT Young Orlando: Gabriel Garcia Cello: Betsy Rettig/Derek Stein Special Thanks to Colleen Jurretche and David Kipen at Libros Schmibros Music by Andrew Norman, Text by Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, and Yuval Sharon 67 "We see the young Orlando, picking up a book off the shelf of Libros Schmibros in Boyle Heights. The audience will have headphones for this. They'll hear Orlando reading a book in Spanish, reading it and feeling like he's being recognized….He then gets into a car where there’s a cello, Derek Stein playing the cello. We hear over the speakers Orlando saying he can’t even recognize that younger version of himself. All those different stages of his life transformed him so much that he barely recognizes this younger version of himself, but that he starts to feel himself add up." 38 -Y.S. CD: There could be no better sound for a portrait of Orlando than a cello. In the back of the limo, we hear Orlando’s inner thoughts voiced over through the car speakers, slow rich notes interspersed throughout the Spanish words. Keeping in the theme of internal/external life, Orlando leaves his space in the car to venture into Libros Schmibros bookstore, but the audience stays in his consciousness through headphones that play his voice reading to himself. 38 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 68 Figure 31. Screen shot of Chapter 32 modal CHAPTER 33: FAREWELL FROM THE ROOFTOPS Trumpet: Jonah Levy Lucha: Marja Liisa Kay Horns: Matthew Otto and Tawney Lynn Viola: Melinda Rice Violin: Orin Hildestad Trombone: Tony Rinaldi/Matt Barbier Music by Ellen Reid Text by Mandy Kahn 69 "Chapter 33 is one of the big climaxes of the whole piece… Lucha has to say goodbye to the illusions of ever knowing what happened to Jameson. She just realizes there’s no solution, there’s mystery, and she needs to give it up. The way to do that is being on the rooftop and seeing other musicians dressed as Jameson far away on other rooftops. She needs to go through that process of saying goodbye to all those illusions. At the end of this ten-minute scene, she’s able to feel like she can transcend all of that. The power for her almost feels supernatural… I think it'll be a powerful moment to look around the city and see all the musicians on all the various rooftops playing together." 39 -Y.S. CD: This was the first Hopscotch chapter I saw on the Red Route preview day on October 4, nearly a month before the show officially opened. They were still working out some kinks, but the swirling of horns and viola that crescendo-ed up the elevator and onto the lux rooftop is a sound that echoes still in my head. I wish I had seen this chapter later in my experience because it’s clearly a climactic moment for Lucha. She is resurfacing from the weight of Jameson’s loss, bolstered by two Orlandos playing the French horn. The Jamesons are flung across adjacent rooftops, but their trumpet/trombone sound pierces across the distance. There’s a younger Lucha playing a viola, a deeper instrument, and a Jameson on the sad violin. Each version of our characters come together in an ensemble, past and present iterations adding up to form their complete selves. Grey-haired Lucha sings, “I know my powers now. I feel how the city falls in 39 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 70 step with me…the city is orchestral. I lift its baton,” and I imagine how beautiful this panorama would be at nighttime. 40 Figure 32. Screen shot of Chapter 33 modal CHAPTER 35: THE PHONE CALL, PART 2 Lucha: Suzanna Guzmán Music by Marc Lowenstein Text by Mandy Kahn Special Consideration from Lewis Pesacov and Paul Matthis "We hear Suzanna Guzman as the other Lucha singing, "A thousand streets lead into one great path, and no gate blocks your way." So, what’s scary and anxious in Chapter 14 is, in Chapter 40 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 71 35, a very transcendent moment. It is the moment that-- I love about how this worked out-- is that it feels like actually she always had it within her to overcome all of her own obstacles, her own fears, her own traumas. I think it is a beautiful message for the audience that comes to see this--that with time and with the process of living, you uncover what is in yourself all along. I hope that, as people piece the story together, that’s what they get." 41 -Y.S. CD: For me, there is no more moving moment in all of Hopscotch than Chapter 35. By the time I climbed in to the limo to find Suzanna Guzmán with her yellow dress and blue telephone, I had seen the Red Route, the Yellow Route, and every other chapter on the Green Route. So in my timeline and also in the chronological timeline of the narrative, this was the conclusion, the end of my road to Hopscotch. In my journey to cover this opera, I myself had become so invested in Lucha’s story that I hated to think that this was the last I would see of it. But watching Lucha speak so passionately to her younger self drove home a very comforting idea: this, the conclusion of the the story, was happening at the same time as the beginning. Somewhere across town, Lucha was just meeting Jameson, or they had just been married, or she was talking to a mysterious voice about the memory of her parents. All these little universes existed at once, so really, there can be no end. Time is simultaneous, not linear. “A thousand streets lead into one great path, and no gate blocks your way,” Lucha says, and I am grateful for the path that has brought me to this moment in this car in the hills above Los Angeles 42 . 41 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 42 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 72 Figure 33. Screen shot of Chapter 35 modal 73 WEB: PAGE 4 The Central Hub: “…a thousand streets lead into one great path, and no gate blocks your way…” TIME LAPSE: (video) Figure 34. Screen shot of time lapse on The Central Hub page THE HUB: Yuval Sharon describes the Central Hub to the cast and crew at the first Hopscotch rehearsal. “This is SCI-Arc, right on the lot. [The hub will be] a temporary structure all made of vinyl and all made of wood. The outer casing is all recycled billboards. So we’re kind of recycling street culture in a way. Inside, all of those chapters [are being] live-streamed to the Central Hub. Those are screens… and they’re connected to cameras that are mounted in the car [that] then streams the live experience back to an audience of 180 people. That audience there [at 74 the hub] is free, so you can tell all your friends they can always see Hopscotch, if they come to the Central Hub for free. [Hub audiences] will get a pair of headphones, they'll have a visual [panorama] of all the screens, but through the headphones they'll be able to choose what piece they want to listen to.” “We see this like a gallery space, where people can stay for five minutes and get a general overview. Or for people that only saw the Red route [and think], “I want to find out what happened on the Green route,” they come to the hub and see those there. Of if they loved the Red route and want to see that chapter over and over again, they can do that too. The limos will drive into the hub. If you're in the Finale, they'll drive in with you in it, and you'll emerge from the car and into the public in the hub. Also those four audience members in the car will do that, too. That’s where the Finale is going to be this additive process.” 43 FINALE From Yuval’s words to the Hopscotch team: “The finale, then, is uplifting in a way. The daily actions that make up our lives intersperse with some more metaphysical ideas. The Finale will include one member of each of your chapters. You’re all going to start singing Andrew Norman's finale all together as you drive towards the Central Hub. Then one by one, [you’ll] arrive at the Central Hub, and [you’ll] form a chorale. So this very disparate, sometimes lonely, sometimes scary, sometimes, exuberant ride that has been happening in individual cars will suddenly converge, and will all of a sudden make one circle, 43 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 75 and will make a center, make a center of the lives of the characters of Lucha and Jameson and Orlando.” 44 —Y.S. INTERACTIVE PHOTO GALLERY Figure 35. Screen shot of photo gallery on Central Hub page In my words: At the end of each performance day, as the last chapter concluded, the 24 limos that were scattered across town make their way to the Central Hub. There, passengers and artists disembarked to join the crowd that had been watching live streams of each chapter as the story unfolded. The singers each held chimes, and together with the instrumentalists, they meandered through the crowd singing a litany. Composed by Andrew Norman, the finale music combined 44 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 76 the melodies from the Lucha portrait (Chapter 29), the Jameson Portrait (Chapter 6), and the Orlando portrait (Chapter 32) layered over each other. The lyrics were simple reminders “to change the sheets,” “text the sister-in-law,” “find a center.” 45 The characters sang a line then dinged their bells with a mallet. As the cars arrived one by one, the sound that filled the hub grew richer. All the iterations of the Lucha, Jameson and Orlando converged, blending their voices into one piece of music that seemed to arise from the crowd. Across the assembly, the Chapter 14 Lucha (Altany) glimpsed the eye of the eldest Lucha (Guzmán) from Chapter 35, and their transcendent phone call came full circle. The crowd parted, and the Luchas come together-- past, present and future exist at once. As the last chime rang, the voices faded into the sky, and the experience that has felt like “a billion universes precariously balanced,” found resolution, connecting moments across time and space 46 . 45 Hopscotch. By Jane Stephens Rosenthal et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 46 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 77 WEB: PAGE 5 Behind the Wheel: Meet The Industry and the Creative Team “…The city is orchestral, I lift its baton…” 47 Figure 36. Screen shot of top of Behind the Wheel page Invocation: Transcript 48 “MAY THE ROAD RISE TO MEET YOU”: YUVAL SHARON’S INVOCATION TO CAST AND CREW OF HOPSCOTCH AT THEIR FIRST FULL REHEARSAL: On September 12, Yuval Sharon faced a room of over one hundred artists for the first all-cast and crew rehearsal for Hopscotch and called them, “An army of people ready to dispel what they think of their own personal limitation.” If they weren’t ready then, they certainly were by the 47 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 48 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 78 time Sharon finished. This was his chance to get them on the same page, to have them understand his vision for his new mobile opera and see their part in it. I’m publishing Sharon’s address verbatim (slightly modified to skirt repetitions and enhance clarity). Why? Because his invocation mobilized both the Hopscotch team and myself. This rehearsal marks my first foray into what would become a personally defining project, the beginning of my life as a journalist. The Industry graciously granted me access to Hopscotch behind-the-scenes, and I am sharing that here. Sharon’s language, passion and insight provide a way into understanding not just this opera, but why art and the making of original work are important to a meaningful life. He also outlines his thinking behind Hopscotch and its intellectual provenance. YUVAL SHARON, Hopscotch director and conceiver: What about opera can inspire us? Can take us to the next level? Take us beyond what we thought we could do? If we are part of that transformational process as artists, then think about what’s going to transmit to audiences. I think that we all want the audience to be transformed by the art that we’re making all the time. I think that begins with the process, and for me it’s always been about thinking, ‘Then how can the process be as challenging as possible? But how can the challenge also be a pleasure? How can the challenge really be a joy? How can it be something that says, ‘I never knew I was capable of something like that?’ A friend of mine was recently working on the Banksy Dismaland and he created a poster that said, "If there isn't the potential to be a disaster it isn’t art," and I thought, "Oh, I completely 79 sympathize with that!” I'm creating a scenario [with Hopscotch] that is open to a lot of risk and a lot of challenges. I want explain what that's about. The most important things that I hope you'll take away from with you today, in terms of what this project demands of you: on one hand, each of you will memorize one ten-minute piece, right, not so bad. For some of the singers, you've done Wagner. Piece of cake. So that part’s easy. The challenging part, as we all know, is how often you have to do [your ten-minute piece for Hopscotch]. The repetitions, the number of times it’s going to be happening. Because you're going to be doing it again, and again, and again. From the performers’ point of view, I would love for you to think of the performance as not a repetition, but as a real meditation. That what you're doing during this performance will never actually be the same thing twice. The music will be the same, for the most part. But those four audience members who are in the car with you, or outside with you, will bring a totally different energy. And you know what it’s like as a performer when you get a different energy from the crowd and what that gives to you. Here, you're going to have an intimate experience with those four people and that will be constantly changing. The other aspect of this that’s like a meditation for me is: the more that you can get in the frame of mind that the present moment is the only one that exists, the more that I hope that series of repetitions will stop feeling like a taxing experience and more like joy. The ability to be plugged into one moment in time so fully is something that I hope really liberates you, and something that I hope makes you feel like you could do it forever. 80 I think if it doesn't end up feeling that way, that’s going to be part of my job to help you with it. I see that as one of my primary jobs. To get you to that state where you can be open and transparent and ultimately in a state that’s very full of grace. Grace has a lot to do with spontaneity. I think the ability to be spontaneously responsive to the work around you, to the environment around you, to the audience members around you, is going to be a state that is incredibly special. [I hope for you] to be rooted in it, and also I prefer the audience to be able to share [this state] with you. We have this amazing opportunity to inspire so many people beyond just those four people in the car for a number of different reasons. I think this is a project that can inspire the people who think they don't even like opera. The people who have never been to an opera before, people who just think, ‘I never thought something like this was possible.’ The background for this project is our last project, Invisible Cities. For those of you who don't know The Industry, Invisible Cities was the large-scale opera that we did at Union Station. A core element of [Hopscotch] was thinking, "how can I come up with something harder than Invisible Cities that will make Invisible Cities look easy and allow me to complete the picture of Invisible Cities?” This was April of 2013, when Jason Thompson, [the production designer for both], and I thought, ‘You know what would be really hard, is an opera that’s in cars, and people have to change cars and move from one car to another.’ When an idea like that comes up, it’s very hard for me to let go. Why cars? I think that’s actually a pretty easy question to answer in Los Angeles. One of the things I think about a lot in LA is: how can we use the experience of driving that we sometimes see as a major burden living in LA and see that as an opportunity to really investigate the city that we're actually living in? 81 If we took driving as a metaphor for life and really tried to investigate that, how will that spell out? So some of the Hopscotch themes include trying to explore the inner life of you as a driver versus the outer life of the city around you. How would those two intersect with each other? How would they link to each other? The idea of life as a continuous or disjointed experience -- that’s another major thematic element. The idea of a search for a center. (By the way, everyone involved with this project, except for four total, live and work in LA.) How do you deal with a city that doesn’t really have a center? What does that mean about your psychic life? Does it challenge you to find a deeper, richer, inner center? I feel like that’s a big part about what my experience in LA has been about. I think a lot of people can sympathize with that. As some of you already know, that’s one thing we'll do with this project, is actually building a physical center, temporarily for the show [at SCI-Arc in the downtown Arts District]. Someone who's been a big inspiration to this project is a French theorist named Guy Debord [French Marxist theorist and author of The Society of the Spectacle]. Debord wrote about an idea called the psycho-geography of the city, which basically implied: what is the world, the cityscape, when you take away the physical geography? What about the layers of memory, and the layers of history, and the layers of fantasy? How does that all lay over each other to create your sense of the city? Debord created a series of performances, which was like a walk. And what happened was you would walk through the city and, ideally through that experience, you'd have this transformative experience, noticing the city in a brand new way. But [with Hopscotch] we couldn't do a walking 82 show in LA, I mean, that’s weird. So we wanted to do sort of a 21st century [version of Debord’s walk] and a psycho-geographic exploration, which of course had to be in cars. One of the things we really want to invite the audience into is a sense of total disorientation, and hopefully in a way that’s very pleasurable, might also sometimes be a little scary. The very streets that people drive every single day; [they are usually] not paying attention to the life of it. Suddenly we're giving them the opportunity through your performances, to experience the city in a brand new way. Another major method I wanted to talk about was the idea that diversity and plurality is the center of what makes LA so exciting. It means that a lot of you are playing the same exact character. So if some of you have been curious when you've seen your friends posting, "I'm playing Lucha!" [And you respond with], “wait, well I'm playing Lucha.” Obviously none of you can be in more than one car at a time, so we needed multiple people [35 performers in total] to play the same exact three characters. There are three central characters. I hope that the effect for the audience is that the single identity of each of those characters is incredibly multitudinous. I think that that’s a beautiful way to look at our own identity. Each of us has a wealth of worlds in us. I know I feel like a different person every day when I wake up, like, ‘Who is this person? And how does this person relate to the person I was yesterday or even a year ago?’ I feel like that’s a big part of [Hopscotch]. The relationship between that inner and outer world. How much does the city change the sense of your own identity? How much does it fill your identity, and vice versa, how are we putting our own identities into what the city's about? I have answers for these. I'm just saying these are the ideas I'm excited to explore with you. 83 Another key element about all of this was that it needed to be one story. The real adventure is the narrative adventure that we're undertaking, and the idea that we’re all creating one story together. A story that’s divided geographically and divided in time, but that nonetheless works together. That’s actually [the] part of this experiment that to me is actually the most exciting. I just want to close with one thing, ‘cause I think it’s really, really important. The Irish poet, John O’Donohue, if you're familiar with his work, writes a lot of these poems that are like blessings. And he started this one poem with this kind of blessing, saying, ‘May the road rise to meet you.’ Wow. That’s a beautiful idea. That’s a beautiful sentiment, and reading it this week was exactly what I needed to hear. I wish that for all of us now. That the road rises to meet us. What I mean by that is: we're going to be facing a lot of challenges in this project. As you can tell, this is the kind of project that has obstacles and challenges built into it, but if we can meet those challenges with humor, with grace, with joy, then hopefully the road will rise to meet us. That’s ultimately how the theater we practice, the music we practice, have ultimately become the reflection of how we want to live our own lives. And that’s what’s, I think, at the core of what we're doing. 84 MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM Figure 37. Screen shot of Creative Team feature of Behind the Wheel page CAPTION: Ash Nichols to the cast and crew of Hopscotch: “This is an adventure. We're kind of breaking out a new adventure to do something very new and very exciting. Some of it is uncharted territory, and we have been working very hard to make sure that everything is getting set up and getting into place. We have contingency plans, and amenities and things like that, but there are going to be things that we are going to figure out on the ground. We're going to have an entire team of people there to get it done. So the big thing is going to be that we need to make sure to take care of each other, and talk to each other. We need to communicate things. So, acknowledge that this is an adventure, and it’s going to be a little like camping sometimes-- a little like roughing it. Some of our locations are outdoors. Some are in parks, some are in buildings, some are in public buildings, public spaces, with people we don’t know walking around. That can be an interesting story! Some of them are, you know, controlled spaces. Some of them aren’t. So there’s going to be a lot of variety, but there’s a lot of people here making this production 85 happen, and there’s a lot of people here supporting it. I think that’s important for everyone to know. Every single one of us is really, really important. There’s a lot of counting on each other. Look at how many people are depending on each other in this show. If one thing doesn’t happen in one chapter, it could be a domino effect on all the chapters.” 49 CAPTION: Marc Lowenstein to the cast and crew of Hopscotch: "Let me talk a little about the musical logistics and the psychology in preparing for this, uh some of you have gotten music rehearsals, others of you have not. We are having separate music rehearsals for pieces that are of exceptional complexity musically, or are so disparate physically... Most other scenes are just going to rehearse naturally with your composer as part of the tech rehearsal. Tech rehearsals have many iterations. If you feel lost and at sea musically and you want coaching, send me an email. I'm happy to go over it with you. We can rehearse much as you need. It's a little frightening-- especially for the instrumentalists who might not be used to performing off stage or from memory-- the concept of memorization. I know that is difficult. Let me just say: by the third weekend you'll go, 'What was the problem?' The real terror is getting there. [If] you can, be as off-book as much as possible by the first rehearsal. There’s so many different musical scenes, and there is an incredibly small amount of rehearsal per scene. I’m very excited to work with all of you because I know you can do it. If you have any questions about the music, any questions about the rehearsals, singers, if you want separate vocal coaching… even if it's just, 'Can you sit down with me and go over it again?' We 49 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 86 can certainly try to have that. I, as one of the coaches, can do that with you. We're eager for this to be as comfortable and exciting of a job for you as well. Thank you. We'll see you on the battle field." 50 CAPTION: Jason H. Thompson from the Hopscotch website: "Jason has worked on over 50 Productions as a Projection Designer around the world. His credits include the Broadway musical Baby It’s You!, Venice at the Public Theatre, Remember Me an international touring show with Parsons Dance Company, Cage Songbooks-- a 45 minute selection of Cage Compositions performed at Carnegie Hall, SF Symphony, and New World Symphony in Miami, Crescent City Opera and Invisible Cities new experimental operas directed by Yuval Sharon, Bad Apples a new musical about Abu Ghraib, The Great Immensity an exploratory theatrical experience based on interviews by the Civilians about Global Warming. He has designed the video for Stars on Ice for the last six years, and has worked with the Scott Hamilton Cares Foundation for the last two years. As a video engineer, Jason was the Head Video Engineer for a multi-million dollar fundraising campaign for Stanford University called Leading Matters. He received an LA Ovation Award, Jesse Award Nomination, LADCC Nominations, and LA Weekly Theatre Award Nominations for his work. In addition to his professional career, he has taught as an adjunct professor at Cal Arts and UCLA. Jason is a member of USA Local 829.” 51 50 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 51 "Hopscotch Opera." Hopscotch. Accessed March 07, 2016. http://hopscotchopera.com/. 87 CAPTION: Elizabeth Cline to the cast and crew of Hopscotch: “We are all so excited, and we are so grateful for the faith you have in The Industry and its process, and we just can’t wait to get you all out on the road. We're fully supportive. Anything you might want to change or discuss, there is someone, someone is going to be there for you. A lot of you will be in a moving vehicles. Seatbelts are available to you. But it’s not California law, so [you have the option to not wear them]. Just a quick mention that safety is really important to us, and we're looking out for you. The production is totally insured, and it’s not just insured by us, but it’s also insured by the limousine company we've hired. So if you’re in a car, you'll be driven by a professional driver, by a professional limousine service that handles things like the Oscars. This is a legit company, and we have full faith in them and your safety with them. The other big picture thing is mystery. One of the most exciting things about Hopscotch, of course, is this mystery. So as a general rule, when talking about the show, we'd love for you to tell everyone you know that you’re in love with the show, but we're trying to keep the routes, the geographical location, and the sights a secret until people start seeing the show. Think of this, if it happens in a limo, it’s fair to talk about and share pictures. If it happens outside the limo, let’s wait until the show is running.” 52 CAPTION: Yuval Sharon from the Hopscotch website: “LA’s avant-garde opera darling” (Hollywood Reporter) Yuval Sharon has been creating an unconventional body of work exploring the interdisciplinary potential of opera. His productions have been described as 52 Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles. 88 “ingenious” (New York Times), “virtuosic” (Opernwelt), “dizzyingly spectacular” (New York Magazine), and “staggering” (Opera News). He is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his acclaimed production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, originally produced at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Yuval founded and serves as Artistic Director of The Industry and directed the company’s productions of Crescent City, Invisible Cities, and In C. Yuval also directed a landmark production of John Cage’s Song Books at the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall with Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, and Jessye Norman. Yuval was Project Director for four years of New York City Opera’s VOX, an annual workshop of new American opera, which became the most important crucible for new opera in the country under his direction. He was assistant director to Achim Freyer on the Los Angeles Ring Cycle and Associate Director of the world premiere of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht with Graham Vick for the London 2012 Cultural Olympics. Upcoming projects include Three Sisters for the Vienna Staatsoper, Die Walküre for Staatstheater Karlsruhe, and many future projects for The Industry.” 53 53 "Hopscotch Opera." Hopscotch. Accessed March 07, 2016. http://hopscotchopera.com/. 89 INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Figure 38. Screen shot of interview section of Behind the Wheel page Undressing Hopscotch: Artist profile of Hopscotch costume designers Ann Closs-Farley and Kate Bergh, an article republished from Ampersand (link). 54 Ann Closs-Farley and Kate Bergh haven’t eaten all day. The North Hollywood sun droops low as the two costume designers return from Olvera street. At Closs-Farley’s front door, a schnauzer and a dachshund leap to greet them. They kick off their sandals Closs-Farley shakes out her pink pixie hair. Bergh sinks onto a wooden chair in the dining room. Sitting down for take-out Thai, they chit chat about the trickiness of wigs and spatted tennis shoes. In a few minutes, they’ll head out again in search of 36 leather jackets. 54 Closs-Farley, Ann, and Kate Bergh. "Hopscotch Costume Designers." Interview by author. September 21, 2015. 90 Closs-Farley and Bergh have been tapped to design the costumes for Hopscotch, Yuval Sharon’s newest space specific opera. Based on a loose fusion of Julio Cortázar’s novel and on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, Hopscotch is a mobile opera, which means instead of playing on stage, the show takes place inside moving vehicles. The setting is hardly conventional, but experimental operas are the hallmark of Sharon and his company, The Industry. In 2013, Sharon provoked Los Angeles with The Industry’s operatic adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. The opera took place in Union Station; audience members and unsuspecting passersby watched awestruck as Invisible Cities characters Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo moved amongst commuters. A feat, to be sure, but Sharon seeks a greater challenge with Hopscotch. The adventure unfolds in 24 limousines that stop at iconic LA locations including the Bradbury Building, Angel’s Point and Mariachi Plaza. Performers and audiences share the space as they drive, witnessing the musical story of protagonists Lucha, Jameson, and Orlando. As this moveable feast rolls through the Los Angeles streets, eventually converging at the Central Hub, a temporary home base at SCI-Arc, audiences are invited to reacquaint themselves with their city. At the first Hopscotch rehearsal, cast and crew, more than 100 strong, gathered to hear Sharon’s vision for his production. Emphasizing collaboration, Sharon said, “This is a project that can inspire the people that think they don't even like opera, the people that have never been to an opera before, people that just think, ‘I never thought something like this was possible.’ And the only way it’s possible is with our communal effort as a team.“ 91 As Sharon spoke, Closs-Farley scribbled notes, crafting her design plan for dressing a cast that includes 22 Luchas and 17 Jamesons of different ages, body types, and ethnicities. The story is split into 34 distinct chapters, so to keep the narrative clear, she must consider, “what would keep the audience from thinking that [Lucha’s] sister showed up, or her mother showed up, or someone related to Lucha, and how do we keep that with Lucha?” When it’s her turn to address the Hopscotch cast, Closs-Farley exclaims, “We only have a couple times to get it right. So I'm not gonna be fitting you very often, so it’s gonna be kind of magical. But that’s what I do! I'm really good at getting to know people, and I'm scanning you like a computer. I'm like superhuman right now!” Her infectious positivity and ability to maneuver what she calls a “kooky” budget for Hopscotch are surely reasons why Sharon chose her for the project. Sharon and Closs-Farley have shared a mutual respect for each other’s work since he “came to town a couple years ago.” She designed for Sharon’s animated opera project, Cunning Little Vixens. In the spirit of collaboration, Closs-Farley told the cast, “I brought on a partner because I just don’t think that I can do this all by myself. Because there’s one of me, and a lot of you.” Kate Bergh eagerly volunteered to sign on as co-designer. “I forced myself on her. That's basically what it was. She was doing the show and I said ‘when is it?’ She told me, and I said, ‘I'll come over and help you.’ That was it. It was crazy,” Bergh 92 recounts, smiling sideways. She ruffles her feathery blonde hair gracefully, and adjusts her Homeboy Industries t-shirt. The two women have been “shopping the show” all day. Pausing now to assess their obstacles, they perch like cats on Closs-Farley’s living room couch. Closs-Farley muses, “Normally you go through a period where you get a script, and you dream about it. You see it in your head, and you have these ideas for the show-- Kate's been…trying to organize like, how do you make sense of it.” “I think the more organized we are, which is creative in a way, the better it’s going to be,” Bergh says. Uncurling her legs, Closs-Farley laughs and blows pink bangs from her eyes. “This is different form of theatrical,” she says, “when you put something in the street, especially in Los Angeles where everybody is spectacular… When Yuval told me about it at first, [I thought], ‘this is guerrilla theater; this is the stuff we used to do in the 90s.’ I'm considerably older, and I also want to know, well, that I could do something guerilla style again. I mean, believe me this is kind of like a show you do in your 20s and you’re naive to the amount of work it is… 93 At the same time, I think if we pull this thing off, it’s going to open the door for other people doing this sort of site specific work that LA deserves, because it does have such a vast amount of space to play in, and there is no reason why you can't do theater anywhere here.” Closs-Farley has always reveled in the mutineer climate of the Los Angeles art scene. “When my husband and I were first married, we would go see concerts at the Greek, but we wouldn't actually go into the Greek, we found out about this place where if you climb down from the observatory, it’s carved out in the mountain. You could see concerts for free, but then there's a ton of people secretly sitting in these carved seats out of the mud.” Closs-Farley and Bergh envision that the Hopscotch characters will look like ordinary Angelenos, but perhaps a little brighter. “We chose the colors,” she says, “specifically for each character, such as Lucha (this is environmental as well), Lucha would be yellow as the sun…joy, it’s a color that holds is self present all day…Orland is brown, of the earth. Jameson is black and white as if it is a distant, noir character…we have our musicians in blue, which are of the sky, and of the things that are very California.” Bergh leans forward when she speaks about how even coincidental audiences can experience the show if they happen to be at the secret locations. She loves how it’s open to everybody. “[This is] a more interesting piece of work than I had done in a long time…and it shows a lot of Los Angeles, which I love. I'm from the Midwest, so this city is very odd to me. You have to really seek out things in order to find it a beautiful city sometimes.” 94 When asked about contingency plans Closs-Farley and Bergh pause and agree. There is no contingency plan. “It’s all an experiment,” Closs-Farley says, “the whole thing is an experiment, it’s never been done before.” But they have faith that it will succeed. In fact, to them, “[Hopscotch] is already a success.” Comparing it to live television, Bergh remembers, “When someone screwed up, it was funny, and kind of wonderful. There's bound to be something that goes wrong in this, and I think that’s going to be part of the charm of it, and part of the interest, and part of the life of this project. I think it’s going to be good.” Behind the Scenes: Q&A with Executive Director Elizabeth Cline A few months after Hopscotch ended, I caught up with Executive Director Elizabeth Cline for an interview about her hindsight perspective on the process of creating public art and the impact of Hopscotch. The following is a transcript of our conversation. 55 Corinne DeWitt: It’s time for me to start being more of a journalist and less of a documentarian. I've been doing a lot of primary source collection verses getting behind the scenes. A couple categories I want to touch on are the planning and the logistics. I want to talk about the SCI-Arc partnership. I want to ask you about your creative hand in Hopscotch because I know you wrote Chapter 19 (which was my favorite). I want to talk about the routes themselves and the neighborhoods, and the budget, and a little post-mortem. 55 Cline, Elizabeth. "Hopscotch in Review." Interview by author. January 26, 2016. 95 Elizabeth Cline: All things I'd love to talk about. CD: So first, tell me your official role in The Industry and how you got involved with the company. EC: Yes, so The Industry is a non-profit. We've been a non-profit since 2013, so we're a baby non-profit, and I'm the Executive Director. I was hired right in advance of Hopscotch. I started in November of 2014, so I hit the ground running helping build the infrastructure for Hopscotch. I decided I needed a title like Executive Director for Hopscotch, which essentially means that I oversaw the big structures, mega structures of Hopscotch. Because it was so big, we all ended up doing a lot. There was the producer side of the infrastructure, but there was also the development side all the fundraising, keeping the budget and the accounting straight, and then managing the relationships and contracts for everyone. That’s hundreds of contracts with partners, collaborators, artists, stage management--every group of people I was managing contract and payment for. In many ways I think of Hopscotch as creating a little micro-economy. So that was really no small feat. We went from [being] an organization who had like $100,000 to a million- dollar budget in a year. For context, this year without a major project, we're at $220,000 for our organization, and that’s with the addition of bringing on Ash, our production manager, part-time, so some organizational growth. It was a big year in terms of building and creating infrastructure to have a million-dollar budget. CD: So where did that money come from? EC: Let’s go straight to it! Because we're so new, and because of the grant-making landscape, we couldn't rely a lot on foundations. The strategy was a 4-pronged approach which was pretty 96 equal: individual contributions, foundations (and when I say foundations I also mean civic, government grants), ticket sales, and corporate sponsorship. Corporate sponsorship [meant] cash- in-hand, not the in-kind donations that we received. If we were to really look at the Hopscotch budget and count what Sennheiser donated, or what SCI-Arc donated in terms of not renting the lot, this would be a 2 million-dollar project or more. But we just couldn't encapsulate and put a price tag on those numbers, and because neither organization needed us to do so, we didn't. So that four-pronged approach was really cash-in-hand, it had nothing to do with what people were donating to us in terms of time and space, or technology. It really was three major sources: the top was individual contributions, and then ticket sales, then foundations, and such a small corporate amount that it’s almost funny. It just proved to be more difficult. A lot of it has to do with being in Los Angeles, there's not a lot of corporate support here. The nature of what we do and who we reach, we weren't big enough for companies like Progressive to get involved and give us $100,000, you know. So our ticket sales were heavily subsidized by individual contributions. It was really important for us to keep the ticket [prices] low, but at the same time, we knew we were going to have to make up the corporate donations. So the strategy started shifting when we realized we weren't going to [achieve] that corporate goal. The way in which we raised the money with individuals was to pound the pavement, meeting people. We had a big fundraiser in May, and we really relied on our network and our board to help us meet people who could make contributions. CD: Like Aileen Getty? EC: Like Aileen Getty. CD: I'm surprised to hear that individuals were the biggest contributors. 97 EC: It was a big surprise to me, too. CD: Is that kind of great in a way? It seems like a more personal sense of support. EC: I think so. I think with a project like Hopscotch, when you sit down in front of someone— it’s undeniable when you sit and talk about it. I worry that moving forward with some other projects, you know, we're going to have to work really, really hard to keep up with that kind of ask and growth. From raising $50,000 to something like over $500,000 from individuals, I think… I mean I can definitely, if you care about those numbers, I can tell you what they are because I just got the numbers in. It’s huge. CD: That's great. Did the donors ever want any creative control? EC: No. Not at all. No. We gave them access. So one of the things that was really attractive was that I personally called people and helped them figure out the tickets. I made sure they saw everything in the order we thought they should, and when we thought they should, and who, with whom that we think they should. So there was a personalized touch to a very complex thing. We made sure they saw the Hub. The big donors got really individualized attention. CD: Everything went off without a hitch? EC: And they saw everything we wanted them to see. It was really important to them too. We had a lot of donors who made significant contributions who loved Invisible Cities or who missed Invisible Cities and did not want to miss this. CD: So what is the “big donor” ideal experience then? What order should you see the chapters? What are the main things that you should see when you're the in the VIP car? 98 EC: That's funny because we externally said of course that there's no right way to experience it. CD: Right… EC: You're not going to miss anything. Everything was designed as an equally epic experience, but what ended up happening, and it was conscious in some ways, in other ways not, was that the routes took on these lives. To see it in a certain way, it actually became Red, Yellow and Green. Because the Red Route ended up having a lot of early chapters in Lucha's life, and the Yellow Route had a lot of these big moments and the two weddings, and so that was kind of the middle life, and the Green Route was in many ways more philosophical and took on some of the themes. I say it was subconscious and not because when we were designing the routes, we were thinking about audience experience counter-clockwise and clockwise. What would it feel like to go from [chapter to chapter]? what happens after you experience Hollenbeck Park? You get in a dark car? That's really weird, or is that really good? So we had to think about those transition points and telling the story. But we also had constraints like making sure each of the composers had work on all three routes. So putting that narrative and people puzzle together in terms of what kind of affectations the chapters had, and how they'd be experienced was definitely thought about. But it was as surprising to us that that ended up happening on the Red, Yellow and Green, that there were like chronological things and thematic things that started to group together without our knowledge. In many ways, it’s the nature of how you piece--so, Hopscotch is about identity formation, right? If Hopscotch is about how we, in hindsight, or in the moment, define moments in our lives, like when you're in the moment, [you think], “This is going to be really defining, I'm going to change 99 after this.” And later you're looking back like, "That's when stuff changed. That's when I became the person who I feel like I am now." Or another strand of that thought is how you're always becoming who you are. You're not the 12-year-old version of Lucha, you're not the 22-year-old version of Lucha, you're not the 42-year-old version of Lucha, you're Lucha in the moment. So all those things actually applied to being in the moment of Hopscotch and thinking back on Hopscotch, like how you are looking at the story. It’s actually is a really interesting exercise. CD: Totally. I think I can remember which chapters I saw in what order. Like I know I ended the Red Route with Chapter 24, the dark car. That was a really contemplative moment for me. EC: So imagine if you started there. CD: I have a friend that did! She loved it. EC: And that colors your experience. You're like, "Oh my God, Lucha's life was so dark and full of tragedy!" But if you start at Hollenbeck Park, you think "Oh my God, she was such a romantic." It was really a lesson in how we categorize moments in your life, and how we choose to look back on them and experience them. CD: You mentioned that you made sure that each composer had a hand in each route. Why was that tricky? Did they have a different aesthetic to each of their styles? EC: Yes. Absolutely. Also, a lot of producing is like giving birth. You have to immediately forget the pain and challenges of it so you can do it again. I remember the struggles of sitting 100 with pieces of paper, like sitting with a drawing like this…[At this point, Cline pulls a giant pad of artists’ paper from the shelf and opens it to an early sketch of the Red Route ] Figure 39. Early sketch of the Red Route "Ok. imagine that these all didn't even have numbers, and didn't have any identity. We're going off what I think Andrew McIntosh is writing that's kind of about the cosmos, and try to set them in, just so you had something to talk about. Then you just had to keep switching it as the pieces became clear. We kind of knew what Andrew's pieces were going to sound like, but [we had to decide] how they slotted in the narrative. [We had to imagine] the feeling of going from a really minimal piece, a complex piece, to a really jazzy weird piece at the Bradbury Building, you 101 know? Also [we had to discern] that the jazzy piece needs to go in the Bradbury Building. When you were thinking about a chapter, you were assigning the writer who had their own style, to the composer who had their own style. And that chapter has a style. Where does it go? Does it go in car? There's a certain logic to that. All of a sudden, a logic developed. Obviously there's not a logic in the world that you can apply that says, “of course jazz goes in the Bradbury Building.” CD: Obviously! EC: You had to develop a logic for [every part of Hopscotch] so that you could start slotting things. Otherwise we were never going to make it happen. CD: So did anything come first? Like when you're trying to put all these pieces together, did you start with a libretto or any one composer or an artist or a location? EC: All of the composers, Yuval had [already] invited. They were on board. All of the writers were on board. They had been identified by one of our board members. They had had one meeting together. Then I came on, and we had a second meeting together. That was just exploratory. Then by the third meeting, we started talking about themes and a thematic map for what Hopscotch could be. I think the first thing that really happened was a spine to a story. Once we decided [the story] was going be someone's life, [we asked], what are moments in someone's life that should be represented in the story? Then a lot of [the librettists and composers] self- identified in terms of who they wanted to work with. Like Andrew [McIntosh] and Sarah LaBrie, it was a natural pairing in terms of their librettist/composer relationship. It was immediately evident in the way they were talking about how they saw the work. Some of that just happened 102 naturally. Some people we had to put together because there wasn't coming about naturally, and then they ended up working really well together. CD: Like who? EC: Yuval will know that better because he worked more directly with story development than I did. But I think I remember some composers really wanted to do something like, Veronika really wanted a Guy Debord chapter. So do we try to force a librettist in that situation or just adapt text? She adapted text. Things were democratic, but not every composer was able to throw the spine away either. We still needed the spine. We were interested in that thematic map that we started with. We could go back and draw from that thematic map and [create] chapters like The Carwash (Chapter 18), which were like interludes that pushed forth ideas that we had about Hopscotch. Or Chapter 19. I guess what I want to say about figuring this out, was that until the spring, there were seven chapters on each route. It was actually a really late night of Yuval and I sitting with these pieces of paper like toy cars, going back and forth, realizing that 7 was never going to work. So by late spring, we had to add three chapters, which at that point in the game was… I thought people were going to have a nervous breakdown. We had just figured out the routes, and everyone has a color and a place. What's three more going to be like?" I thought it was going to break the world in half. What happened was there was some material that could actually be made into a chapter because it was already developed pretty far along. Then there were moments where [we wondered], "Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a motorcycle outside of one of these cars?" Yuval was like, "Well maybe we'll just write a chapter." So that was great all the chapters 103 had mostly been written, and [we] got this opportunity to put forth, themes or ideas that [we] wanted to wrap up in these people's lives, and their characters, or in the piece in general. So Chapter 19 was born out of a need for an extra chapter on the Green Route, but also in response to wanting to talk about some of the themes and wanting to play with some technology that we [hadn’t yet gotten] a chance to fully exploit, which was the inside/outside Sennheiser technology. CD: So how'd you do it? Walk me through that process? EC: [Yuval] said, "Wouldn't it be great if there was a chapter with two different points of view about the world, and it’s a conversation in which you work it out?" Then he started writing, and then we passed it back and forth. It became a dialogue between us and between the characters. There's a lot of quotation in that chapter. It was a chance for Yuval, I think, to bring out the inspiration for Hopscotch and some of the things that he was reading. It was an opportunity for me to think about things that I think about, meditation and looking inward. So I think some personal subjectivity was inserted into it, but generally speaking it was really about having a chapter that talks about Hopscotch. CD: Are there other moments in the whole production that are as personal? EC: Probably for the librettists. CD: Yeah? EC: Yeah, I bet. I'm sure for the composers. I think that if you asked Marc Lowenstein about Hollenbeck Park, he would say that it was a love letter to his wife. I think that it’s impossible to commit to a project like this without having personal moments. 104 CD: Sure. Just for the behind the scenes aspect, how did you get the notebook from the motorcycle into the car? EC: A sleight of hand. He just threw it up and caught it. CD: He did it very well! You were brought on with the Hopscotch idea already in place. How did Yuval tell you what it was, and how did you react to the idea? EC: At that point, it was still “an opera that takes place in cars.” I don't even think [we thought of] the sites yet. I don't even think that idea was fully formed. "Well maybe people get out and walk around..." I think was the secondary part. And I remember thinking, like most people think, the horror of, "Oh my God, that sounds like a logistical nightmare.” But at the same time, I'm interested in experimentation and doing things I've never done before. I think everyone had to come to the project with the same spirit and same inquiry about how we make…I'm going to use some really lame non-profit speech…Art with a capital A," big, transformative Art--things that take a lot of people to make, and therefore build a community around a project or an idea, and can have the potential to transform communities of people or individuals. I believe in that, and art's power to do that, and I think that, especially our producer team had to believe that too, because it was really fucking hard to do this. Everything was hard. We actually went through two production managers before we found Ash. I mean, the production manager was the most difficult, put-upon, constantly shifting position, and we went through two before we found Ash. CD: Was that ever discouraging? 105 EC: It was very discouraging. I did not want to produce this show. It was not in my, in the company's interest. It wasn't in anyone's interest for me to be the producer, but because I've played that role in past, and because I'm really good at it, you just naturally do it. Everyone does it, and everyone had to do it. It’s not like I was going to say “no” to doing anything, because no one could say “no.” You just did not say “no” on this show. You said, "Yes. And?" to everything. Everyone had to problem solve, everyone had to be incredibly creative all the time. I think when you do something like Hopscotch, where the process is evident in the experience, the process has to be as creative as the work. Then at the same time, you have to keep at the front of everyone's mind. You have these collaborators. This is a collaborative artwork. It’s nothing else but a collaborative artwork if we're just breaking it down. I call it a “collaborative artwork that's in real time response to a city.” That encapsulates what's so great about it and what was so challenging about it. One thing that's easy to lose sight of when you're doing something so difficult is that you aren't doing it because you love logistics and process, you're doing it because of the artwork, and you believe in a transformative project. You have to know that all of this is in service of the art. So how do you make it as elegant and challenging as possible? Because that's the kind of art it’s in the service of. I think that producer team knew that, and that's why it worked. CD: Suzanna Guzmán actually said that the reason why this worked was the joy of the producer team. I wanted to ask you about that actually. Every time I ran across you guys, I was struck by your level of calm and excitement. But I can't imagine that it was always festive. How do you maintain sense of joy? 106 EC: You just have to really believe in the work. We had to be so optimistic and have a lot of faith and commitment to it, everyone. Oh my god, the performers, too. But I think obviously, it was very easy on the producer side to be frustrated constantly and really put-upon. But I think that we were lucky enough that this project attracted a certain type of person who that doesn't affect. I would say of anyone, I was the one most affected by, I mean, just how grueling it all was. You didn't see the payoff until we were doing it! So it was a year of grueling work. What's worse is that it was all theoretical-- so you had no idea if it was ever going to work. I mean, really, you knew the car was going to go from A to B, but you didn't know what the transition was going to be like. You don't know the affect of being in a car instead of being on a stage. What's your relationship to the performer? How do emotions read? Is it going to be really big or really small? Is it going to carry any emotional [substance]. It was really hard to know those things. Do we need a lot of set dressing? Do we need none? There was so much to not know. CD: Did you ever think it might not work? EC: Yes, all the time. CD: All the time. EC: Something that sounds so trite when you say it in hindsight and you say it in public is: "Well, we wouldn't do this if we thought it was going to work." But it’s true. Why would you ever do this is if you think, "Yeah, of course we can do it. We can do this opera that takes place in cars and sites." No, we're doing this really crazy thing," and it was always on the verge of a disaster. That's really hard emotionally and psychically and for all your relationships. It’s also 107 the only way to do it because you can't create anything new if you know exactly how it’s going turn out. CD: What’s that Banksy line from Yuval’s speech at the first rehearsal again? "It’s not art unless there's a possibility of total disaster?" EC: Total disaster CD: I guess that's the value of the preview routes, to at least try one thing before the general masses are open to it. EC: That's right. And another thing. When we first conceived of the schedule, we were going to open all three routes at the same time and the hub. As we were working on the schedule, [we realized] that we can’t. I don't think this is humanly possible. It’s kind of interesting to go six months into a process and say, “Wait, let’s actually change everything.” I think that slowly rolling out one route by one route and then the hub was a necessity, and we realized it almost too late. CD: You mentioned that it was coincidental that the routes adopted their own persona. EC: Character, yeah. CD: So the Red Route came out first then, and that happens to be kind of the beginning of Lucha's life. Was that in any way planned? EC: It just happened. It just like. CD: So magical. 108 EC: It was funny because I was the one who thought they should be red, yellow and green like a traffic light, but at a certain point the writers wanted it to be heaven, hell and purgatory. [I told them], "You can't call downtown hell! You can't have a neighborhood geographically relate any kind of value judgment. It has to be a little more neutral." The routes were chosen for so many reasons, right? There was geographical distance to SCI-Arc. We had to be 15 miles within SCI- Arc to make the finale work. CD: That's pretty far! EC: Yeah, it is pretty far. That's the furthest point on the Green Route, and that was pushing it. That chapter is always last to come into the finale. Also what’s so amazing about driving through LA, is how you can go through vastly different swaths of the city, and it’s so diverse from moment to moment. We were trying to pick areas that were really diverse in terms of representing a bunch of different types of people that make up the fabric of LA. Whether it’s architecture or people, that's really what we were thinking about when we were designing the routes. When we decided that, geographically, Boyle Heights was one of the areas-- we wanted Lucha to be from Boyle Heights, so her character morphed. Everything, if you can imagine, everything happened at the same time. The story was developing as we were deciding where to go, as we were deciding the mechanics. So the creative team and the producer team were working together, and they informed each other every day, differently. Because Lucha wasn't Lucha until we decided to go to Boyle Heights. Lucha was someone--a puppeteer. CD: Probably not a Mexican-American, right? EC: No. 109 CD: That was my other question. Interesting. I like that. So the novel then, Hopscotch by Cortázar, did that work into the decision-making about the character at all? EC: It didn't, funny[ily] enough. The biggest nod is Orlando. We worked in that story line in the animations, but it was really the story-telling that got the biggest draw. I think you probably know this already-- the only reason why we didn't do the novel is because we couldn't get the rights. Then it became the biggest blessing because we got to make a story about Los Angeles. The other thing I like to say that encapsulates the production is that we were producing a lot of things at once. We commissioned all this music, so we were producing the music part of it and the live show. We were producing, for lack of a better way to describe it, a gallery exhibition at the Central Hub. None of us were qualified to create a structure and then make an exhibition of it. We produced an entire book at the same time. And the animations and the documentation. So these were huge projects in and of themselves that made up Hopscotch that had to be produced with an intense hands-on and very creative problem-solving, attention-to-detail way of looking at it, and they all had to be interconnected. They all had to be part of the mechanics of the show too. CD: That's your entire life. EC: Yeah CD: What's it’s like now that it’s over. Has it changed you? EC: You know, um...No one's asked me that question! I think that, I'll remember at the very end of Hopscotch feeling very confident, like I have solved the ultimate producer challenge, that I would be able to produce anything in my life, and that nothing could ever be as complex as 110 Hopscotch. Whether it’s the people puzzle, how people fit together, or logistical challenges. I think we all feel really confident about the nuts and bolts of our abilities. I think that there was so much to be learned and to be done with how you bring people into process. When you make a collaborative art work, what does collaboration mean? How do we define that nomenclature for ourselves? I think that will be really important moving forward. It was inspiring to see that we posed this question about creating a nonlinear narrative that is really open ended, and that we trusted an audience to respond to it and take it on as their own, and they really rose to it. For me personally, it changes the way I think. It doesn't change, but reinforces these ideas about art making, that audiences aren't dumb. You don't have to spell everything out for them. Art making is that distance between the creator's ideas and the brain of the audience, right? So that's where the real art making happens, and that space in Hopscotch is enormous, and we really trusted that an audience could handle it. And they did! I feel like they were really inspired by having that much space. That supports a theory that people are ready for this type of experimental work. Even more so that this type of experimental work can be called opera and be placed in this way. Why I joined an opera company from the visual arts world is that opera means work. Right? It’s the original multimedia transdisciplinary artwork. It is. Opera developed as a place, a repository for artwork that was being created that didn't have a name already, that couldn't fit into a category of theater, drama, or music, or art/visual art. So they called it work. If you really think about opera in that way, I think it has a real vital place in contemporary culture, and I think Hopscotch really demonstrated that. 111 CD: I think a critic suggested that The Industry should let go of the opera tag. EC: That's right. CD: Because it was expanding the definition. But you think we should hold on tight to that? EC: I think we all oscillate between thinking it’s our biggest barrier to people wanting to participate, as either audience member or, quite frankly, a funder because opera has so much baggage. But It’s really exciting to think about an art form that's been around for so long. Letting an art form die doesn't seem like the right answer [either] because it’s so full of human culture and history. So how do you make an art form relevant again? It’s the most exciting thing ever. It’s like human culture! Why would you let go of that? CD: One hundred percent agree. What did you think about the media coverage of it? It was so heavily covered, like more so than any show I've ever... EC: I think it was a dream come true for a small arts organization, quite bluntly. I think that New Yorker article was a dream of everyone's that someone would advocate for you [who is] outside of the organization, who's not a board member or participant in any way, who would advocate for your work and take the time and thoughtfulness to describe it so beautifully, and like we imagined Hopscotch would be experienced or written about. Like a dream come true. CD: Alex Ross was great. EC: I think that when the coverage started, it was discouraging--and I'm just speaking for myself-- I was very discouraged about how much people wanted to talk about logistics. [At the 112 press conference], I made sure to present as little as possible about logistics because I wanted to say what I said earlier, that this is art. This isn't about logistics. At some point, you have to give yourself over to the fact that you're not going to know how we did this. "Letting go" is a message we wanted to push the entire time. The conceit of the whole project is what happens to a car when you get in and you don't know where you're going. That's the first question. So at a certain point, it was discouraging for me when all the press was coming out, and it was focused on how sensational the whole thing was without any kind of acknowledgment of the 100 artists involved in the creation of this. In many ways, that was kind of the story. There's 100 artists contributing to it. We've commissioned all this new work. The music from the composers to the animations, the animations were all newly commissioned work and the music. CD: Did you have to explain that to the artists at all. EC: I think there's a culture of understanding. We explain it one way. We can send press releases out. We can do a press conference. We can make a video about the logistics so you don't ever have to think about it again, but it doesn't matter. The press is going to do what the press is going to do with what you give them. At the very end, Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times, his article was so beautiful. It also served as documentation for the piece, and I think that when you have a couple of articles that you feel are documentation of your work, that is incredible, and we couldn't ask for anything more. CD: How did you feel about Swed’s review? 113 EC: Oh. You know. He was at that press conference, and the points that he talked about [in his article] were things that I addressed exactly about why we were in those communities. I think he missed the point on a lot of things. Kiki Gindler, who is one of our supporters, she said this on her Facebook feed and also at dinner when we saw her the other night, she felt (she's also Latina), she felt that he was actually being really racist, suggesting that people in Boyle Heights don't have limos, where in fact, quinceañeras are the number one clients for limo companies. Boyle Heights is the only place in which we ever ran into [non Hopscotch] limos. We had a constant problem at Hollenbeck Park where we had to make sure people got in the right limousines, because there were so many limos for weddings and quinceañeras there. Which is crazy. CD: That's such a fun detail. EC: You know, right? We're like, “Oh no, there are 6 limos here at Hollenbeck park today.” I think that we all have opinions about his writing and what he's interested in, and he missed the point. It was a shame that he didn't think about writing about the music as a music critic. (Laughter) That was a shame. CD: I had a bad day with that one myself. EC: That was a really missed opportunity (laughter). CD: So when dealing with those protesters, did you have a particular verbiage that worked to smooth things over. How did you handle that? 114 EC: No. Behind the scenes, we tried to make a lot of in-roads in Boyle Heights. [We wanted] to get the support of all of the cultural institutions that were there, being in Boyle Heights for an entire year or more. We had an advisor who helped us translate the website, the homepage into Spanish, and make Spanish postcards to hand out, and [to do] Spanish-speaking newspaper press outreach. He did all that. [He] wrote and translated our press release and sent that out to our major press outlets and got them to come to the show, and he also [reached out to] stakeholders in the community. Guillermo helped us do that. He also met with the Serve the People group (who were the protesters) often. There was a truce between us that lasted until the very last day. There were two instances: there was one at the beginning with a confrontation. Throughout the entire show, Guillermo went to their meetings and talked to them and told them what we were about. There was this truce, just internally, we were calling it. Then the very last day, there was THE incident that ended the show, unfortunately. [There was] also another group of people (who we weren't in conversation with) who showed up that day. I think we did everything we could do without having a community organizer on staff. We were so encouraged by [the Boyle Heights community]. For example, the East LA Community Center, we used their site as a green room. If they didn't welcome us into the community, we would have never been in Boyle Heights. Self Help Graphics & Art, you know, the oldest non-profit in Boyle Heights, supported the work and helped us connect with artists who we commissioned [to build] the wood sculptures. So every step along the way, we were being encouraged to stay in Boyle Heights, and to do our work there, from the year we were working on the project, to when we started producing it, until the first incident happened on October 24. 115 Then we went back to all those community leaders, and we told them what had happened. We still continued to get the advice to stay. Then we had direct outreach to that group of people who were protesting. CD: Suzanna Guzmán was telling me that she was in Elysian Park, and she grew up around there, and she had a situation with a barricade, a human barricade in front of her car. It only lasted for like two or three minutes, but the stage managers were able to talk them out of that. EC: In where? CD: In Elysian Park. Chapter 35. She was panicking because her music was going to run out, but they were able to make up the time. EC: I didn't hear about that. CD: I guess it was over quickly. EC: Oh wow. CD: I'm sure you got those phone calls on a pretty regular basis during those days those about various calamities. EC: There were small things that happened all the time-- a flat tire, or someone got pulled over, or things like this. But the last day was the day in which everything went wrong, and Hopscotch was over. It was like the protest in Boyle Heights happened at the exact same time that I had to 116 call LAPD and be on site with a stage manager who was having a problem with a tenant at a building. CD: At the Million Dollar Theater? EC: No that was something else. We didn't call LAPD for that. This was like, he physically…this tenant of this building physically threatened all of our stage managers. So I had to go there at the exact same time the protests were happening. We almost had to press charges against this guy. I was trying to mediate it, and he was, I think, the biggest asshole I've ever met in my entire life. CD: That's a big one. EC: He was irate because his car got towed. There were signs there for months. Months and months and months. And he knew what we were doing. CD: So how did you deal with that? Where'd you learn the skills to mediate with an irate asshole? EC: When you make work in the public with the public, you have a certain amount of skill sets. But honestly, we could have give everyone better tools and training. That's one takeaway that I have, when I mentioned earlier about how this changed me, I would have a session with the stage management and a session with the artists about making work in public. [It involves] mediation, conflict resolution, giving them context for why we are in those communities, or why we chose those places so they understand our perspective. Then it’s about giving them a tool kit so that they can be in those places, which might be talking points, or might be mediation or conflict resolution depending on who the person is. I think that The Industry could do better and will 117 about preparing and educating the people that we work with to make art in public. It’s not without it’s complexities. CD: Does that mean that there is another public art project in progress? EC: I think we'll always make work in public. CD: Anything to this scale? EC: Yes. Our next project in 2017 is. It actually, it’s so funny—it’s public, but it’s not. There's two projects: one I can't really talk about, which actually has a lot more public engagement. For that, we'll have to do some kind of training, for sure. But the other one is the Galileo project on the beach. Have you heard about this one? CD: Not yet, no. EC: It's at Glow, which is the triennial art festival on Santa Monica Pier. We're doing Brecht's play, Galileo, but we're going to build a 40-foot bonfire on the Santa Monica Beach with a huge carnival around it. CD: I think I heard something about puppets at some point, too, right? EC: That's probably Young Caesar erotic puppets, did you hear about those? It’s Young Caesar, which is a Lou Harrison opera that we're doing as part of our LA Phil residency, but that will be in the hall. That will actually be a pretty straight forward opera. CD: Is that exciting for you? Or is it a filler? 118 EC: Well. I think what separates me from other people who work on The Industry projects is that I'm actually really interested in opera, the music and the development of the music, and the musical ideas that composers have and continue to have about what can arise in opera. And new music, new classical music and experimental music. I don't think our production manager would ever say that. I think our production manager might say, "I would never work on an opera except if it was an opera that you guys were doing because I have no interest in the art form," because Ash feels like it’s exclusive, like it has a history of exclusion. I'm actually interested in a lot of [elements of opera], however I'm not an expert, or a scholar or a practitioner in any way. I come from a place of pure joy for experiencing the art form and the ideas that can arise there. CD: I'm a new fan of that myself. There is a bunch of different types of music within the Hopscotch cannon. Was it your husband that produced--? EC: He produced a lot of stuff. He composed all the music for Chapter 19. Once Yuval and I realized it was going to be a dialogue, it was Yuval's idea to have a sound bed for it. At this juncture, Lewis [Pesacov] had already been producing all of the music for the animations and little things here and there. We have a home studio, so we were recording all the voice overs that we needed and things like that. He just became such a part of the project that we said, "You should have some of your musical ideas in the project." It was a really natural thing that he would create this music. The three of us were working pretty tightly together on all that other stuff. CD: I think that comes back to your definition of collaboration, right? If you could quantify that, do you have a way to say what collaboration is for this piece? 119 EC: I think it’s an organic process of merging ideas together. I think we tried to create a situation in which there was no hierarchy between people or ideas. Traditionally, in opera, the music comes first, so that's a struggle that some people might have with the way that we work. There's no hierarchy where the most important thing is the music. I found myself saying a lot, "If you can't hear the music then what's the point? why are we doing this?" You had to change that way of thinking. You had to know that everything had to have an equal voice. CD: At what point did you know this was successful? EC: There was so many points. So many points in which I knew the process was successful. But when I knew Hopscotch was successful was the first moment that Yuval and I were standing in front of each other at the Central Hub, and we were looking at one another [thinking]: we have 24 chapters of this big artwork that we made together out in the world, and we're just looking at each other right now. We're not doing anything. We're not on the phone. We're not putting out a fire. We have created this network of people who are working together to make this art work happen, and it’s beyond us now. That's when I knew it was successful. CD: What are you most proud of? EC: I'm really proud of creating something in which a lot of people had an opportunity to be...I don't know...to discover something about themselves. Everyone was working so independently. I'm sure you'll hear this throughout, we might have rehearsed a scene twice, and then it was theirs. I never saw things again. Yuval maybe saw things again in the process, but who knows what they were doing out there? There was a lot of faith--that the stage managers, that the performers, that the limo drivers, that everyone was doing what we asked of them to make the 120 project work. Everyone was working independently, and I think that trust…There's something to be said about putting about 60 23-year-old women out into the world to make scenes happen in response to everything that they have to deal with. Personally for me, [that] is something that I'm really amazed and inspired by-- that, and I make a generalization because we had great guys in the stage management team, but generally speaking, we're talking about women between the ages 20-25 out there making their scene the best they can, every single day, in the face of enormous challenges that change minute to minute. I think that, I want to hope that that changed them in some way, and they learned something really valuable in that. I think they did. CD: I think so too. I asked all the Luchas this, but what do you hope that people remember the most about this? EC: There was an amazing thing that happened in Hopscotch where things were constantly shifting, like you had different frames in which the city was shifting, the action was shifting, things were constantly shifting, and you were rearranging yourself opposed to them. I think that's a really beautiful way in which to live your life. You're constantly shifting and the world's constantly shifting, so you should be. There's no fixed way. That's something that was really successful and beautiful about the piece, and about the way that I want to live my life. CD: That’s really beautiful. Out of curiosity, did the show make any money? EC: No. Not in any way. As a non-profit, we can't really make a profit at all. We covered our expenses. We have some outstanding bills that we're still trying to figure out how to pay, but it’s not dire. We need to have a cushion on which to start the beginning of the year, and this year we don't have any income basically. So we're fundraising all year for next year. It's a little tricky. 121 CD: But that doesn't affect your definition of success in any way? EC: No. Because we're a non-profit. CD: Good. EC: There are no egregious errors or bad business at all. I think it’s a surprise that we did everything within the realm of what we said we were going to do. CD: It’s phenomenal. EC: I like that you looked at this and you didn't even ask what A.S.S. stands for! (referring to the hand drawn diagram of a route) CD: I wanted to get my list of questions because my brain--one thing at a time. Now that we're here, tell me what A.S.S. stands for. 122 Figure 40. Early sketch of the Green Route EC: So this is, at a certain point, we realized that we had no idea how we were going to take care of our artists. So this is Artists Services Summit. A.S.S. So we had to have a meeting that was like six hours long about how to take care of artists. For lack of a better terminology, we called it Artist Services. So that means green rooms: where they where going to change, where they were going to go to the bathroom, how they're going to eat because there were only half an hour breaks between each show, how they're going to get there. This was a point in the process where I wanted to kill myself. Like I couldn't handle another meeting talking about how they were going to go to the bathroom, and if a porta potty was sufficient, and who was going to have a fit about being in a porta potty, and who wasn't. 123 Theoretical conversations about how they were going to handle this, and who needed extra care, and who didn't. If you can imagine, this conversation about artist services, we were having these conversations about every single thing thing we were doing all the time. This was almost the tipping point where I didn't know if we were going to be able to pull this off. A trailer costs $10,000 to rent. Figure 41. Early sketch of the Yellow Route CD: For one weekend? EC: For the duration of the show. That’s minimal. This is like, they're on a schedule, and as a favor, and they're giving us a deep discount. So $10,000 for us is a really big deal... 124 CD: It’s not just one trailer either. EC: It’s 24! So we couldn't do it. We could only do one trailer. And we had to figure out ways. For example, Chapter 33 becomes an A+ artist service chapter because there's bathrooms there on site. There's a green room built in, there's parking. They can park for free. I mean, just imagine paying for parking for a hundred people ten times. THAT'S a million dollars. But something like Chapter 2 is a D. [There’s] pay parking, there's no bathrooms, there's nothing built in, and Chapter 2 has to shuttle from somewhere else. So that means no time. CD: Why'd you pick that lot? EC: Because it’s owned by LA County, and we knew that we were going to be able to get it without a threat of film shoot. The biggest threat to Hopscotch was the film shoots. We would have been kicked out of all of our locations. CD: Yeah when I lived downtown, I got kicked out of my own parking spot once a week. EC: Exactly. It was our biggest fear. So yeah. This was a big, big fucking deal. Figuring out how we're going to take care of artists out there because the conditions in which they were working was really, really hard. CD: How did you handle [Chapter] 33 with this roof situation? (Note: Chapter 33, “Farewell from the Rooftops” featured musicians stationed on three adjacent rooftops in the Arts District playing and singing in ensemble across the distance). 125 EC: The trombone stayed in Michelle's apartment unless he wanted to come down. Jonah had to stay on the tower because there wasn't enough time to come down all the time. He just came down off the roof and we had food, and he used the bathroom. Chapter 33 the rest of everyone else, there was an office that we used that was the owner of the Toy Factory Lofts developer. We used his office. CD: Did they ever give you any hell for hijacking the elevator for the whole day? EC: That was the scene of the asshole that got his car parked. But I think the tenants were worn there at the end. CD: I'm shocked that no one gave you any more problems than that. ED: I think there were instances that I didn't hear about. I heard later that there were tenants who were in the elevators and showing their displeasure in various ways, like not holding the elevator, stalling, stuff like that. CD: The people who saw Hopscotch were great. How were folks who encountered it accidentally? EC: I had a lunch at Daily Dose Café. I was sitting there having lunch, and I could hear the trumpets and the trombone [from the Chapter 33 rooftop]. There was someone sitting next to me that was so turned on by the whole thing, saying "what is going on out there?" It feels like, "I'm living in a musical." That's something that's so magical about this piece. Those moments where you wish, or you think the world's been transformed into a musical or an opera whether it’s like, you're in the car 126 and the music perfectly synchs up to something you're looking at, or some drama is unfolding in your neighborhood, and you're like, “Oh my God, this an opera set.” Did you see that picture that was circulating that was like a drunken New Year’s Eve scene, that looked like a renaissance painting? (This is the photo we’re referring to. It “went viral” in the winter of 2015) Figure 42. New Year’s Eve on Wells Street in Manchester, Joel Goodman CD: Yeah they water colored the whole thing. EC: Yeah so, those moments! That actually happened. We actually did that, where we like, really made the whole world an opera. Like we tried to make Los Angeles an opera. 127 CD: How did you get up the Bradbury Elevator? How did you pitch that to the powers that be there? EC: We had someone who was good friends with the developer who actually showed up and advocated for us again and again. CD: So convenient! And then it’s magical that the Lucha Reyes statute is outside Schmibros? EC: I know. That kept coming up, we knew our character was Lucha. Then being in the Million Dollar Theater where Lucha Reyes performed, it was... CD: Magical. Do you have any questions that I should be asking? EC: I told you about A.S.S. which was my breaking point. This was my breaking point. CD: Was any route more difficult than others? EC: The Green Route was impossible. CD: Yeah? EC: Yeah. CD: It seems so low impact with fewer spectators to worry about. EC: I mean, where was everyone going to go to the bathroom? Where the saxophone scene was and the trailer scene, you had all those people had to converge on one point. Figuring out the cost of providing little snacks to 100 people that could be sustained over 10 weeks… stuff like 128 that...My brain couldn't handle any more information. I didn't want to know the price of a case of Cliff bars. Like if I had to talk about the price of paper towels, I was going to lose my mind. Like lose my mind! CD: All those questions came to you, right? Yuval's off limit’s. EC: But he did other crazy things. When I said, "Yuval I can't handle this anymore. You have to do it!" That's what you do when you're partners in something. You say, "I see you've reached your limit with that, so I'm going to just take over that conversation," you know? You just do it. There's a mind meld, and two of us had it early, and then three of us had it. We just knew something could happen. I think you were standing there when we got shut down at the Central Hub by the city of LA. CD: I was not! EC: Kira [Qwan, the Central Hub manager] was there. For some reason I thought you were there. CD: What happened? EC: Where in the world does this happen that the head of the LA City of Planning, his route to work every day just happens to go across the 4th street bridge. And he happens to be watching every day as someone's building this gigantic structure, and then he just happens to send his deputy out to shut us down right when we start building the walls. CD: What was the problem? 129 EC: He was out of his jurisdiction. He didn't know what he was talking about. He just saw it every day, and thought he would impose himself. CD: That sounds like a good use of time! EC: It was a Friday, and you know we work over the weekends on a schedule. That moment that he shut us down put us $10,000 over budget because of what we had to do to go through, all the hoops he wanted us to [jump through], then pay overtime and get people there to reach our deadline. So this was one of my finer moments in the production where I knew that I couldn't freak out, and I couldn't tell Yuval, so I had to figure out what to do. I begged and pleaded with people until I got the cell phone number of the Special Events Planner and called him on a Saturday morning, got him on the phone, told him the situation. He green lighted it. And then got him to show up and say, "It’s fine, you guys are totally right." CD: What was the complaint? You were building without telling anyone? It’s a private lot though? EC: A permit! It's a private lot, it’s a special event, it’s a temporary structure. We knew the rules! We knew the rules. CD: Good job, you! So how long did that whole shutdown take? EC: It was a couple of days, but in the scheme of things…Imagine this! In the mean time, everyone who you've got on board to work got called off work. We had to pay them for that day. Then they picked up other gigs because they didn't know when we were going to open up the work again. 130 CD: Such is the nature of construction. Woof. EC: It was a nightmare. CD: Is the hub? Is that how you imagined it to turn out? EC: I don't know. It’s funny because the hub was the free part of the whole experience. It was really important for everyone involved that there was a way to experience the show for free, and a way to put it all together and see the work as a whole as much as anyone could do that. But it was the most difficult and expensive part of the whole show. CD: Do you think the show would have worked without it though? EC: It would have been different. I think that the Finale when you saw everyone coming together really sealed so many thoughts that we were having about the project. I hate to use this word again, but I thought it was really magical, and really touching to see all the characters, thinking about all the moments of your life. How they're pieced together to create who you are. It’s so poetic, and I think really moving. CD: I loved every minute of it. Delaram [Kamareh] was saying though that she never got a chance to see all the chapters. EC: We had two opportunities for them to come and watch everything on the screens. We're figuring out the documentation now, but we have footage of everything. In triplicate, basically. We have mountains of it. We didn't keep every single live stream, we only have recordings of a portion of the live streams. There will be a way. We're figuring out what's the best way to experience every chapter, and we'll release it in January of next year. 131 CD: And you just recorded... EC: We recorded a couple chapters that we decided could live as recordings out of context, which I thought was important again to this idea that we did commission new music. Music is really important to this opera we made. CD: Which chapters? EC: We made live recordings of the Finale, of Bradbury Building, which was so much about the spatialization of that music, at Million Dollar Theater, which was about how that music was spatialized. Then in the studio we recorded Hollenbeck Park. We recorded the saxophone scene with the duet. We recorded just the music box as a little lullaby, Justine and the music box from Chapter 15. We also recorded Quayla the angel singing her part, because that piece already had half the music recorded. All the music was recorded. We just had to add that voice. CD: The children's choir, right? EC: Oh and we're recording the quinceañera scene. CD: Oh! Which Lucha are you using for that? EC: Natasha. The more innocent, naive one. CD: You have Chapters 14 and 35 already recorded, right? EC: And 19. CD: And 24. But the duet with Maria Elena and-- 132 EC: That's already recorded. CD: Do they ever get to sing together? EC: They never sang it together. I wonder if it would work. They'd have to figure it out. We did record them separately. That was so early on. I can't imagine what it’s like to be Maria Elena, now she's sung it 248 times. Imagine when we recorded it, she’d sung it once. Then we recorded. It’s different. It’s in her body in a different way, and I kind of feel sad that it exists. CD: It’s a sad piece. They all internalized the character so much. EC: I know. CD: How is the Industry affected by Hopscotch. There's so much attention now? Or was it the same with Invisible Cities? EC: I think it just keeps building. I think it’s hard to capture the momentum too. It’s hard to... this is really personal... have a messaging that's not like we're making spectacles. That's the last thing we want to do. I don't even think we're interested in making immersive art work. I don't think that's what's interesting about what we do. I think messaging is really challenging, and we need to make sure that we find a way to do that, and talk about our ideas and our work that is not focused on the sensational nature of the projects. It’s hard because you want to get the attention and sometimes, it’s a fine line. I also, I think, we're very small, and we have to raise a lot of money. CD: Interesting. 133 EC: We're very small and we have to raise a lot of money. Just the nature of being a non-profit, and foundation and government support is just not there. Especially in Southern California, everyone's going for the exact same money. CD: Would you ever consider not being a non-profit? EC: I'm not sure what that would look like. I have no idea. I have no idea. CD: Are there any themes you're looking to explore in the next event? EC: Galileo. It’s really a great time to do a piece like Galileo which is Brecht's probably most well-loved play. Yuval's really the Brechtian. He knows so much more about this than I do about the culture, about it’s history. It’s basically about the moment where Galileo recants his scientific knowledge to the Catholic church. So if anything, Galileo's known for bringing science to the masses. He took it out of Latin and into Italian, trying to spread knowledge to the people. It’s a really interesting time to explore that. What's knowledge? Who controls it? How does it reach people? When knowledge is used a tool for empowering people and when it can really, really do the opposite. That the fire, in many ways, is this burning truth at the center of the piece, and that's how we're imagining it. What happens when knowledge or truth gets in the hands of whom and what do they do with it? I think those are all really interesting questions that Galileo puts forth. CD: Great. Any last thoughts? EC: Collaboration's really hard. Public art is really hard, and being small is really hard. Our goal when we do something like that is to make it look effortless and inevitable. Like, of course there 134 was going to be this opera in Los Angeles where there were cars driving around! But you know what? It was really hard to figure out. And we were figuring out until people were in cars. But you have to find a way in which you do your best to make it seem inevitable and seamless. The commitment and faith in the project that the production team showed really made that possible. 135 WEB: PAGE 6 Under the Hood: A Word with the Artists “How do you know you love me when there are so many yous and so many mes?” 56 Figure 43. Screen shot of top of Under the Hood page MCHAS LUCHAS: video embed 56 Hopscotch. By Sarah LaBrie et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 136 Figure 44. Screen shot of Muchas Luchas section of Under the Hood page As the main character of Hopscotch, Lucha was probably the most iconic new figure in the opera world in 2015. Audiences followed this mysterious woman in yellow across Los Angeles, spending time on each leg of the Hopscotch journey with Lucha at different stages in her life. Maria Elena Altany, Justine Aronson, Delaram Kamareh and Suzanna Guzmán are four of the 19 Luchas. They each approach her differently, of course. But there are ties between them— interconnections of the sort that Hopscotch in it’s designed randomness as an opera (directed by Yuval Sharon) excited in viewers. Kamareh embodies what she calls a “Freudian Lucha.” 57 She sings of feeling “precariously balanced, ready to fall forward or back.” Her music, composed by Veronika Krausas with 57 Kamareh, Delaram. "A Word with Delaram Kamareh." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. 137 libretto by Tom Jacobson, is echoed by Justine Aronson’s Lucha, who sings the same words and melody in her chapter also written by Krausas and Jacobson. The music not only connects the Luchas to one another, but also permeates the singers’ personas. For Guzmán, the role of the elderly Lucha is deeply personal. “The Elysian Park route is my hometown!” she says of her chapter which takes place in a car that drives through the hills near Dodger Stadium, “Every moment in my life and Lucha’s life are intertwined.” 58 In an aria composed by Marc Lowenstein with libretto by Mandy Kahn, Guzmán’s Lucha says, “Time is happening all at once,” as she makes a phone call to her younger self, the Lucha played by Altany. 59 Altany’s Lucha rides in a separate car, singing a duet in conversation with Guzmán’s voice on the other end of the phone. This video explores the dynamic between older and younger Luchas, and how profound it was for both Guzmán and Altany. Composers and librettists informed and influenced the singers’ understanding of this compelling and complex character, Lucha. For all of them, Lucha’s experiences meshed with their own. The role was personal, and the line between performer and character blurred. The audience was left with the sense that to connect with art is to connect with the self. 58 Guzmán, Suzanna. "A Word with Suzanna Guzmán." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. 59 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 138 Hopscotch Diaries: photos with audio rollovers With over 100 artists and countless collaborators, the magnificent size of the Hopscotch collective precluded me from interviewing everyone individually. To collect a wider breadth of experiences, I created a mechanism for the artists to call in and share their own stories. “The Hopscotch Diaries” is a voicemail box for contributors to share their Hopscotch adventure. Figure 45. Screen shot of Hopscotch Diaries portion of Under the Hood page Artists: Step One: Call (213) 262-8984. It will go directly to voicemail after a few rings. Step Two: Leave a brief but detailed message including… • Your name • Your role/chapter in Hopscotch • Tell us an anecdote about your experience • How did Hopscotch challenge you? 139 • Anything that surprised you? ———————————- Audiences: Share your story! Call (213) 262-8984 and leave a brief but detailed message including…. • Your name • Which route you saw, or if you experienced Hopscotch at the Central Hub • Descriptions of your favorite chapter • What thoughts Hopscotch provoked • Anything that surprised you * Tips: Please speak clearly. The recording cuts off at 3 minutes. Voice Memo Option If you’d prefer, you can also record a voice memo and e-mail it to Hopscotchoperadiaries@gmail.com. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: Suzanna Guzmán 60 On November 19, 2015, with one weekend of Hopscotch performances remaining, I met with mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán, an esteemed veteran of LA Opera, at her day job as an administrator at Los Angeles County High School of the Arts. Guzmán plays the oldest Lucha 60 Guzmán, Suzanna. "A Word with Suzanna Guzmán." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. 140 from Chapter 25 on the Green Route of Hopscotch. Her chapter begins in the hills of Elysian Park, where we see Guzmán as Lucha making a phone call to her younger self, Maria Elena Altany’s Lucha on the Red Route. I spoke to Guzmán about her challenges, her unique perspective, and about how the Lucha character affected her. Suzanna Guzmán: I didn’t grow up with opera at all. So for me, I had to find out what is it about opera that… why was it so passionately pulling me? I know what it is. For me, the music, the language, together, the 3-D story telling, but what makes an artist work in bronze, what makes an artist work in movement, that’s so interesting to me. Honest to goodness, what got me into opera was William Shakespeare. I was 13, and I saw Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, and it was like seeing the world in the brightest three dimensional color. When Romeo says, "it seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear, beauty too rich for youth, but earth too dear," it just all of a sudden made our ability to communicate so much more expansive, so much more dense. Then you add music to that, and it felt like it was the way that we all should communicate. I believe that we do. I believe that, and I’ve seen it happen. When I'm singing, and there's someone in the audience that understands what I'm singing about, I can feel them get it. Like in Hopscotch, there's a place near the beginning where I'm speaking to my younger self, and I say "Your voice, your delicate voice,” and almost every time, if they're in a couple, they reach for their partner's hand. And you can feel that onstage in opera. That's why, I don't… that's the only reason I do it. And that's why I do children's shows, because I do, I see them. I've done my show, Don’t Be Afraid it’s Just Opera for about 20,000 kids. And I can see that “take someone's hand” moment. I can feel them do that connect thing. Once they get past the understanding of why we sing the way we do, and why we 141 repeat things they do, they laugh they cry, they’re moved. It’s like a pin drop when I do [Madame] Butterfly with third graders, because they get it. It’s so cool It gets harder and harder as you get older, to open the doors. I think students who go to a university and are say, forced, to see ten shows this year, or three shows, whatever, who are forced into that capacity, often have a good shot at it. If you're in an environment where your mind is being, someone is demanding that your mind be open, then you have a good shot. So my feeling is that, it can hit you, if you've never been exposed to it, and I mean ever, it can hit you in your mid twenties. You still have a shot of finding it. My other thing is that, I believe that somewhere in everyone's life-- sometimes it’s in church, sometimes it’s a dynamic speaker, sometimes it’s in the line of a building that takes your breath away, a sunset, and that stays within you, smoldering, until you find it again. I really believe that. Sometimes you can go through your life just in sepia. Just black and white. Get up, go to work, watch the clock until it’s 5 o’clock, and believe me I've been there. But there's something in you that is always looking for that third grade child who saw this amazing sunset or, was in the blackout and stood in the street and could see stars. There's something in us that can get back to there, and I think that's my hope. The biggest, the biggest way we could get back to it as adults is through our children. So when the light goes on in our children, the lights open in us too. It’s exciting Corinne DeWitt: Is [your son] Connor artistic? SG: He is. Primarily he is a singer. He was at LACHSA [Los Angeles County High School of the Arts, where Guzmán also works as an administrator] as a music vocalist. He plays piano. He 142 writes. He just won first place in a competition, and his play was produced. But the really cool thing, and you can edit this out if you want, this is so cool, but on December 17, he opens at the Gateway Playhouse in Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, and he's Prince Charming, and I'm the fairy godmother! Is that random? Our friend is the choreographer, and she told us about the audition. He went in and just nailed it, and he got a contract. Then my agent said they'll take a video audition from you. So he already got the job, and I submitted a video, and it is my cup of tea, I'm the crazy Marie, so I get to, I have this great line where she says "Crazy Marie, what are you doing in that beautiful dress," and I said "you'd be surprised how many beautiful dresses have crazy women in them!" (laughter) He comes home today, he's been in New York, and I haven't seen him for several months, so, he is one of those people who--art infuses his being, and his kindness. He's got a generosity of spirit that he was born with, and to watch him grow up has been such a privilege. But to recognize that there are children just like him, throughout this school, throughout our city, I see it when a child says, "Mom, let’s get closer," you know? And the parents who listen, man, that's how you change the world. If you feel like you've missed your shot, like you feel like you're old and bedraggled, and you can’t do anything else, just listen to your kids, because they will not only renew and infuse you, but just by listening to them, just listening to them. It fans that spark for them. That's what’s going to make the world a better place. CD: Do you get to convey that to the 15-year- old Lucha? 143 SG:I have never met the 15 year old Lucha. I've met, of course, Maria Elena [Altany], but I've never… I saw, I finally got to see the video, and what I loved so much about her performance is that exquisite place in our lives where the world is safe, and we are, open for any possibility. The way that she sings, I saw her live stream, and the way that she sings, it’s so filled with that innocence and that carefree attitude. And that scene, her streaming, infused my character so much. In music we have fortes and pianos, dynamics they're called, that let us understand when something is tender, when something is exaltant, when someone is furious angry, when someone is painfully hurt. And I think in life we have emotional dynamics and young Lucha represents the quietest softest piano, where you dream and your dreams are all just right here. There, you can touch your dreams emitting from yourself! And with Maria Elena, the middle Lucha, the light is completely gone, to the public. But my character is the older Lucha, has swum through all that, and I know that the light is not gone, I know that it is just deeply deeply covered. The young Lucha, and myself are the only ones that really have great joy in our little journey. She because her whole life is ahead of her, and she sees only possibilities. And me because my life is behind me, and I see that I made it back to joy. CD: What would it be like for you to call your younger self? SG: I ask that question. I think it’s a beautiful question, that would be a fantastic, just a general questionnaire to hand out to people. Like what would you say, if you could pick up a phone and you know your younger self is on it? 144 For me it’s particularly evocative, because not only am I calling my younger self, which, I don't have my parents any more, that’s one thing. My mother did have an opal ring, it’s my mother's actual ring that I wear around my neck, which I love that! Okay, I glued the two rubies on, but it was really opals! But I'm going through the Elysian Park route is my hometown! I can see the high school, and the house my father built is one block down from that high school. I can see the hospital where I was a candy striper. I see the old city jail where the Bilingual Foundation of the Art which is where I got my equity card. I can see the Sears where my mother…I can see the store where my mom used to buy our uniforms! So for me, I am immersed. And Dodger Stadium, where I sang the national anthem three times, ha! We start my route at the fire training towers, and my father was an LA county fireman--visited there, worked there, trained and taught there for 30 years. Not only is this set up for me, in the most perfect possible way-- and it really a coincidence, they didn't write this part for me-- but it so is my life. So for me to call my younger self, it’s, it really is like taking a rolodex, if you remember what those are, (laughter), and just spinning it and fanning through all of these experiences of my life to that moment where Lucha gets this phone call. So I have a great line where I say, "Time is happening all at once," and I'm like holding on to the side of the car like, "Oh my God! I remember what that was like when I got this phone call." It’s so surreal, and what is it like? It’s the feeling of what it would be like to speak to my mom again. What would it be like to listen to myself on a message machine, the things I used to say. I remember, I used to have a message machine that said, it played the act three overture, or act four overture from Carmen. (singing) "YOU HAVE FOUND ME" (laughter). That's what I used to say. 145 CD: On your outgoing message? SG: Yes. YOU HAVE FOUND ME! I can't come to the phone right now. It was so stupid. But to hear, to hear that and all the things surrounding who you are, and in a nutshell, with Lucha, all the things that are surrounding her-- the disappearance of Jameson, the odd attraction with Orlando, the letting her hair go dark, all of those things are just parallels of what a woman my age sees in their own life. CD: So what is it like to have this whole experience in such a close, confined space with groups upon groups of strangers? SG: Or really good friends?! Oh my God! I sat next to a really good friend of mine, and people will walk in the car and not realize where they are, and be like, "Oh my god it’s Suzanna," and I'm trying to talk on the telephone. I'm dialing the phone, trying to look really professional, and they lean in. It is really intimidating. One of the blessings that our technical director that our gave us is a bright pink [gel]. Thank you for the pink gel![ It keeps the] light [from] my eyes. So I have this warm cocoon that is also defined by the cord [she uses the phone cord to partition her seat in the car off from the audience], by the corded portion. And one of the ways that I create the whole bubble for myself, I really do, do technical preparation. I had this wrap, and I spread it next to me so no one will sit right next to me. Sometimes they still do. It’s like, "Hello!" I put that there. And the extension cord, I sit as far, as close, the way that I position myself, I try to create a little stage for myself. I try to start the scene in a way that they will understand that the scene is ongoing. So one of the things that I just remembered on a rotary phone, and you wont remember this, you're too young. But we used to have something called exchanges for our little neighborhoods, and East LA was “Angeles.” Those corresponded with the letters on the phone. 146 Mine was Capital, which was C.A. So when you were little, instead of learning an area code on your phone number, you would learn Capital 53541, and that was evocative. And that is something in my own space that I throw out as much as I can. So I don't see people. The only thing that's hard is if they’re laughing and giggling. Their spirit infuses me. Sometimes it takes, which is not bad, sometimes it takes me in a whole different direction like, sometimes hearing young Lucha's voice takes my breath away. And brings tears to my eyes instantly. Like seeing a movie of myself as a young young person. That's what the sound going in my ear, that's what it feels like. And other times it makes me feel like, "Oh my God, oh my God, this is so like San Gabriel Valley!" And it makes me giddy and laughing. A lot has to do with the nature of the crowd. I sing this one portion in 5/8, which is not a very common time signature, and I've had several people in the audience clap with me, like they're going "Oh!" while I'm singing. And they get it! That is really cool, cause you never get to see that from the stage. CD: Do you think it’s a more musically aware audience? SG: I think it’s a more… just, anyone who is game to go on this trek, it’s an adventure. It’s an adventure. It is a strenuous one. You're getting in and out of cars. You're going up and down stairs. You have a… it’s not sitting back. It’s immersive as all get out, and I think that in and of it’self, if you're game, is more adventurous. So they're more together. I guess, they're more game. CD: Tell me about your performance day. 147 SG: I have 20 minute breaks. There's three shows, and between shows I have 20 minutes off. Other than that, literally, they get out of the car, she opens the door to the next limo on the other side--my stage manager--she'll come around, knock on my door, I knock back, other people get in. It’s literally 10 seconds between, maybe 45 between shows. So the first time we did, we only did two shows back-to-back, so that's 18 ten-minute segments back to back. I was… I was dead. I did not recover until Thursday, and my voice was so horse, cause we're singing, sitting in those seats that you sort of collapse like this. I've learned over the course of the five weeks that we've been performing where I can support, where I need to support. I've also learned how to pace myself, and take care. Everything that you're taught as an opera singer, how to…We have this saying here: we hear a cough, a sniffle, a sneeze, and we say, “Are you sick? Get well, get out!" "Get well! Get out!" So taking care and getting plenty of sleep. But it’s grueling. I had my little supplies. I have, from my personal [supplies]: water, pineapple juice, apples, papaya that I can choose. If I have pushed too hard--there's some portions in there that are very emotional, and I can feel my cords might be swelling--I know you're not supposed to do this, don't do this at home, I'll take half an ibuprofen to relieve the swelling and make it through the day. And then I am quiet. No alcohol. Sorry, coffee, tons. Sleep is imperative. So it’s a real marathon, and I honestly can't think, I cannot think of any other show that I have looked so forward to doing every week. I love this show. CD: I think Yuval mentioned in that first rehearsal about thinking of the repetition as a sort of meditation and using that to get to transcend. 148 SG: That was so helpful, to use it as a meditation. I think I have it easier. My notes are unbelievably low, and thank you, Marc. But I sing low E's, which is equivalent to a high C for a soprano. They're super, super, super low, but they're so musical, and they're so integral to the part, and as a meditation, the poetry. I get to sing the beautiful line, "With the pushing of your youth and the pulling of my age, I will meet you in that room." There's something, there's something so calming about being at a stage in life where you can, it’s like floating. When the pulling of my age to me is the way that you get pulled down the stream, it’s like, "Now take me," (laughter). I am ready for whatever you have to throw, and it will not cause me any pain or any distress. I am just…go, just go, I'm here." CD: Is that how it is in the Finale then? When you meet up Maria Elena [Altany]? SG: It’s fulfilling in the way that-- have you ever been in the oddest, the most unlikely place and bumped in to someone you know? I was in an airport once. I literally was going up to exit this way, and a friend of mine was coming down, at Heathrow, and we're going like this. I went, "Tom!" He went "Suzanna, what are you doing here?" "I'm here for a day" "I'm leaving right now!" There's something. It’s that touch of home, it’s that. But with Maria Elena, in particular, when I see her, and I tell, when I say, in my line, in my aria, I say, "Love is structured like all time," and it dawns on me: if love is structured like all time, and time is so movable right now, I can meet you, I will you see you, I will show you, that everything I've said is true. So when I see her, it’s like that old friend who you see, who is calm, and who loves you, and who embraces everything that you are and shows you that it turns out wonderfully. That's how it is. 149 CD: Do you sense that seeing the other Luchas as well. Like the violent Chapter 22 Luchas? SG: I get to meet them. In the Hub, I see, I'm the one I think… I don't know that anybody else has my perspective because I see all of these phases of life and how they've come, to become me. Seeing this still, I see young Jameson, and the loss of someone you love doesn't ever go away. But if you can remember the joy and the beauty, it overshadows the loss and the pain. The other day we were doing the litany, [the Finale number in which the characters mingle with the audience at the Hub before forming a chorale] and one of the of the mad Luchas [from Chapter 22] came up next to me, and her face was right here. We were singing the litany together, and we were in perfect 4ths, which is not, it’s not dissonant, and it’s not, but it’s not a unified chord. It’s an open chord. You could think of it as hollow. Singing next to her made, I feel like I am trying to infuse the younger ones with that sense of hope. Perhaps that’s what happens to us, somehow through our life-- no matter how dark it gets, somehow that hope that has died in us rekindles somehow. In this environment I'd like to think that I breath a little bit of hope their way. That's how, with someone like Jameson, I love so much that I got to see the book throwing scene, and as he drives away, he says "Tell Lucha that I love her." Because I'm such a firm believer that nothing real can be threatened, and love is real, and even if she didn't hear him, Lucha gets it. She got the message. I get that message at some point. Then looking at the joy of the married Lucha, and the accordion Orlando…My aunt met the love of her life at her 50th high school reunion. She was 68 years old, and two years later she ran her first marathon. 150 So the joy that I see, when I look at the sky or I haven't looked at the sky enough, it takes my breath away. I love seeing her. The Bradbury Lucha causes a lot of pain, and my heart goes out to them, to all the angry Luchas. It is about healing. And I think that's why, it must be a reason why I love this so much-- I play my own age, I get to literally look back on stages of someone's life that mirrored my own. CD: At what point did you really understand that. Was it when you received the score? SG: Everything about the show is completely intact as Mandy [Kahn, librettist] and Marc [Lowenstein, composer and Musical Director] and Yuval [Sharon, Artistic Director] created it. They just unknowingly tell my story. One of the things that we accept, is, we accept our age. I never tell my age, but it’s quite obvious that I'm the oldest Lucha. There was something that in itself, rang so beautifully for me, that I was the oldest one, and I had the greatest perspective. And that it was so magical too. I think that during the learning of it, which Marc's music is incredibly challenging, but so beautiful-- once I learned the music, it was easy to infuse Suzanna and Lucha and then to see and celebrate the… just every second on my route is my life and Lucha's life intertwined. Every second. CD: That’s gorgeous. You mentioned the music. How would you describe Marc's music? SG: To do Marc's music, you have to be a really excellent musician. Honest to goodness, it wasn't until I got it on my feet, during the previews, I kept saying, "Oh my gosh, that's why this is here!" It’s one of those things like, like a new pair of shoes--the more you wear them, they finally start to feel comfortable, and before you know it, you never want to get rid of them, even though they gave you blisters the first three weeks. 151 But his music, there's a couple spots where I didn't… it was supposed to be: I sing, she sings, I sing, she sings. Intertwined like that. And I would get confused, and I wouldn't count like to four. I came in with her, and it made this awesome thing, and Marc happened to be in the car, and he said, "That's better, keep it." So to have someone who is that joyous and who has…he and Yuval are dreams. And Mandy's words-- when she says, "the pain will black your eyes…" When I was a girl, we used to like Maybeline. That's what you did. You know how now you get this soft stuff, and you can make doe eyes? In the old days, you would take a Maybeline pencil, and you would literally put a match to it. It would stay for a long time, but when you cry, your make up would just run. "Black your eyes." And even little things like, she, Mandy said some things that were not colloquial for East LA. Like “MaMA,” or “Ama” to say "your mother." She was so easy with us to change them, or just to make them paint a more specific picture. And it is an operatic scene. There is no doubt with dynamics and arc, and there are some things he [Lowenstein] specifically said, "Please, less vibrato. Not so much diva. Give me more emotion." I'm a trained opera singer, there's other points where I can let go, and use my full opera voice. I couldn't do this if I hadn't been a trained singer. CD: How does Hopscotch relate to your body of work? SG: In the past, I would say, two years, it’s so ironic...I made my debut at the Kennedy Center as a character named Lubasha. I had long, blond braids, pink makeup, and they covered me in blue eyeshadow so it looked like I had blue eyes. In the last, I would say, eight years of my life, I have been portraying more and more Latinas. This year, I've been in this body of new works, I 152 played an art banker in Facing Goya by Michael Nymen that's very minimalist. What it’s done, it’s so surreal for me because I didn't grow up in opera, and I didn't learn to read music--don't tell the Met this, but I didn't learn to read music until 2008 when I went back to school. So the bulk of my career, just thank God I have a really good ear, but once I learned to read, it opened up this whole new wealth of new music, and I've always been just so thrilled with creating a new role. In Florenzia, I created the role of Paula. In Gian Carlo Manotti's opera, Goya, I was the Duchess of Alba. To do a role for the first time is always so thrilling. In that sense, Fantastic Mister Fox, I was Mrs. Fox. I've always loved finding a new character that would have that resonance that I love. So in that sense, it’s similar to the path that I love very much. As far as the actual music and singing with a track, a prerecorded track, it’s all just the magic of theater to me. As long as there's music, I am always singing in an ensemble. I am always singing with that creative pull, that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning, you know. I would say, it’s different but it’s not surprising. The biggest difference, the BIGGEST difference, is the joy of the administrative team. That's unusual. CD: What is it like to work at The Industry? SG: It’s a dream company. And the biggest reason is that they believe in you. And there are no greater bosses in the world than those who say, "Here's what I envision. What do you think? Sounds good, go do it," and who are not afraid to give you notes. They make you not afraid to take them. Having someone have that kind of confidence and giving you the leeway is the most creative thing you can ever be a part of. It is magical. 153 And to find these guys are so full of joy all the time-- Yuval said during the big opening, "Unless it has the capability of ultimate disaster, it’s not art." And there is that whole sense that we are a little close to the edge here. He pulls it off, and that, sense of joy. So you're grounded with this really difficult music, that's incredibly musical that you have to sing. Otherwise you'll get so thrown off. The whole technical aspect, that's a whole other issue, and that's in tandem with being on the edge of your art to tell the story, of your story telling. This combination is…You know, if I can go to Italy every year, and sing with The Industry until the day I die, I will be so happy. CD: What impact do you think Hopscotch will have on the perception of opera in LA? SG: I have opera colleagues. I have a friend right now who's singing Magic Flute in San Francisco [who says], “I don't get it. I saw the animations, I read the synopsis, I don't understand it. I need to see it. I need to be there.” I could tell him until I'm blue in the face, and he's not going to get to see it, unfortunately. But I think the impact on the community is two-fold: first off, The Industry, with Crescent City and then Invisible Cities, they got the public going. In Invisible Cities, it was-- that's where I first met them-- and took my headphones off because there was this little kid in front of me going, "What, what what?" And the grownups around were just zoned out. This kid just got it, and I said, "do you want to hear?" "Yeah!" Put the headphones on him, and he froze, and got it. So the impact that The Industry first has created is magnetizing a whole new audience, and the audience that they're magnetizing are these, are the people who want that flame fanned. They see more out there, and it’s as though this little kid said, "I knew it," so they're discovering, and when we did the First Take this year, all these new works, packed house, high-schoolers to 154 octagenarians, if not higher, and who got it. In the piece I did with them, I was Laura Huxley. I met a journalist who had been with Tim Leary when he died, who knew Laura Huxley, who knew Aldous Huxley, who knew Allen Ginsburg. To have this experience infusing this younger generation--that in and of itself is this amazing combination. So the impact of Hopscotch was not only immediate, [the people in the car allowing themselves] to be taken over by the experience, but it’s also that ‘aha!’ moment that there's more. You know Baz Luhrmann, is that his name, Moulin Rouge? He started it in Moulin Rouge when they have those amazing mélanges, and Placido [Domingo] is the moon. He was the perfect moon! He's perfect! And when I do my kids show, and it makes sense. You have to sing that way to sing over the orchestra, now tell me the story. That once they get past any preconceptions that they might have had, it’s all about the story telling. In this case, first Yuval and Marc set up this company that tells your story in a new way. Now they're telling this story out of order! You have to figure out how this all goes together! But what it did was make your brain work. Your brain is firing on all their neuropathways, and I think that is thrilling. That is. And you can feel it in the car! You've got people who are getting it! I had a group of senior citizens, and you never, you just never know. Some of the people who come in our car are pissed off. [They're like], "Oh, ugh, she's right there." Or they'll come in and not--- they'll just ignore all the protocols that we've set up and say, "So, how are you?" and trying to talk to me. So this group came in and, and I was braced, you know, I was braced. Shields up. And she went, "Oh it’s the older one!" (laughter) "It IS me! Yes, you're right! it is me!" 155 There was one child who didn't get it, and there was another, same age little boy who sat at the edge of his mom's lap and he got everything. Same age, maybe six? You're not supposed to bring kids to this, but he got everything. Did I answer your question? Yeah? Oh, good! (laughter) CD: Talk about the challenges that come with a new format. SG: There was one really good one… it was just so awesome. I didn't know--- I could see out of the car who's coming, and I didn't recognize anybody in this particular group, and they sat down, and my face was turned away. When I got on the phone and I faced them, he actually said out loud, "Ah, it’s Suzanna Guzman!" (laughter). That was so, so cool! The challenges of having people talk to you and trying, and not looking at them. Or looking at their feet all the time! We got stopped on the route by residents in Elysian Park. They stood in front of the limo and would not let us pass. And I am listening out of the back of my head going, “Oh my God! What's going on?” trying to continue. It turns out they were annoyed that we were going up and down the street on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m going, "Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick!" I just kept singing. I thought about if it gets to a point where my music runs out…but our driver, Wolfgang-- it’s such an orchestrated ballet with our stage manager, my driver, and the other groups--they made up the time. We were only stopped for two or three minutes, but that's a lot in a 10-minute scene. 156 The other challenge is: only once, in all five weekends so far have I ever had to break character. That was because a group got in, and it was too cold for them. So they were looking for the vents, and they turned off the music. I was going to try to go on, and then I said, "I'm sorry, I think you turned off the music,” and I'm knocking on the window. And I’m panicking because the time is going, and now I'm banging on the window! And it’s, "What? What? We hear it! We hear it!" You have to fix that. I said, “I’m so sorry!” Then the little lady in the middle said, "I'm so sorry. it was me" (laughter) It was so precious. Sometimes someone would put their purse right in front of the speaker. We only had one dress rehearsal, so as we've done it more and more, we've been able to see—I mean, seriously, it’s 36 times, I do it nine, 24 times, 24, 48, over a hundred times we've done it. I'm able to anticipate different scenarios, so if someone puts their purse in front of it, I know that it will change. Or it'll change for the next car if their feet or legs are in front of it. I do tense up when someone reaches for the top to play with the knobs because that's the worst case. There was one other weird thing that happened… That was the worst. Sometimes in the early days, we wouldn't get through all the scene, but it’s okay because it sort of goes on. It’s okay CD: What about smart phones? How was it to be constantly recorded? SG: The only time it was distracting was when I turned a little bit to my side and I saw that someone was recording me. I realized it might have been a reporter, so the only bad thing is that I would support more and sing better. No one takes pictures that I know of. Because I have this bright light in my eyes, I try to… I do try to tune all of that out, but it’s definitely…there is a 157 sense that everyone is working so hard to create the momentum and to keep things moving. I'm going to be 100 percent responsible for all of my props, my call times, everything. I understand I have to be part of this gigantic machine and keep it moving. I think we've done an amazing job. CD: For framing purposes, can you introduce yourself and describe Hopscotch as best you can. SG: I'm Suzanna Guzman. I play the oldest Lucha. In my chapter, throughout my entire life, I have been told that there will be a phone call that I will receive that's very important. I am drawn to this location as my older self, and there is a telephone there, and I realize that the phone call that I have been anticipating comes from me. In my scene, I call my younger self, and I tell her that there is a place beyond loss, and there is a calm and peace in allowance and acceptance. I think I just let her know that life will hold joy for her once more. The story of Hopscotch is the life of a young girl from my hometown, East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, how she falls in love, how she loses her love, and how she finds love and her art again. That's the story. Hopscotch is Guzmán’s first project with The Industry. 158 FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: MARIA ELENA ALTANY 61 I spoke with soprano Maria Elena Altany in her Silver Lake home on the morning of November 23, 2015, just a few short hours after Hopscotch’s closing weekend. Altany plays Lucha in Chapter 14 on the Red Route, in which Lucha receives a phone call from a person who she later realizes is an older version of herself. Altany describes her process, the impact of the performance on her personally, and her predictions for how Hopscotch relates to the opera world. Maria Elena Altany: I'm Maria Elena Altany. I'm a soprano, and I play Lucha in Hopscotch, one of the Luchas. The way Hopscotch works: it’s moments in Lucha's life, and Lucha's played by a bunch of different people in each moment of her life. It’s broken up in a nonlinear fashion by cars, so a moment might take place in a car traveling through different parts of LA, then arrive at a different location that is specific to the story, and a different part of Lucha's life will unfold with different people playing the same characters. Corinne DeWitt: Describe your chapter. MEA: My chapter is Chapter 14. Lucha is married, but feeling a little torn between her old self and her childhood and her family, and the loss of her family, and this artist that she wants to become in a different part of LA with different people. She's been told by a fortune teller in her old neighborhood that she'll receive a very important phone call, and my scene is her receiving that phone call, which is my future self calling to tell me to really live with my past and not 61 Altany, Maria Elena. "A Word with Maria Elena Altany." Interview by author. November 23, 2015. 159 repress the memories of the parents that I've lost, and to honor them and accept where I've come from and who I am. CD: Can you talk about your process. How do you prepare? MEA: There was no real preparing because we just...it’s so different from what any usual production is like. It was a learning process through the whole thing. My scene was written for me and for Suzanna Guzman by Marc Lowenstein. So I got to work with him beforehand, which was really lovely. It’s such a privilege to be able to do that. So it was studying the score, it was really studying the text, but it really came alive for me once we started rehearsing it. Once I talked it over with Suzanna about what was really going on. Then it became really deeply personal for me. Part of it was working on the logistics of the car, what angles I needed to hit to make sure the audience could always see me. Somebody sitting right here, if I'm turned away they just get the side of my head. Also [I worked to] not to be stuck in on place and use the limited space that I had. A really interesting part for me was: Yuval really encouraged me to relate to the neighborhood around me, but because we travel in a circle, sometimes the beginning of the music would be in the Arts District, and then the next time the beginning would be in Boyle Heights. So the story would change with the location even though the music stayed the same. That was a really interesting challenge for me to try to express that, and how Lucha feels in each neighborhood-- her new aspirational self as an artist versus her old self that she's not so comfortable with in Boyle Heights. CD: You mentioned you spoke with Suzanna before you got started? 160 MEA: Back in February, Yuval had me and Suzanna play around with different equipment, and we actually tried singing to each other live over cell phones, which was really interesting, but also very difficult. The delay just made it impossible, so what they settled on was having us make a recording of the duet and they just isolated the vocals. So I had a recording of the instrumentals and Suzanna's voice playing in my car and sang with that, and she had a recording of me and the electronic instrumentals in her car. What's interesting is, when we made the recordings we were there together, but we never sung together. We've never sung this piece together. It’s always been separately, so hopefully we'll get to do that sometime in the future. CD: Do you think you'll record? MEA: I don't know, I think there might be a concert of the music of Hopscotch that might happen, we'll see. I hope that we get to do it together. Suzanna's expressed that she'd like to do that too, and I'd love to. Although I'm sure it would be like completely relearning the piece because we're both so used to the recordings that we had. It would be a completely new experience, but I'm sure it would be a really emotional one. CD: Talk about the site-specific challenges. You mentioned the neighborhoods? What’s it like in the car? MEA: It was so difficult. It was a very challenging experience because one of the things that I love the most about being in a theater is the team feeling. I know it’s cheesy, but the team feeling of working with a cast and working with your colleagues and really being all in it together-- to be in a car feeling so alone for four or five hours, it was really difficult and it’s very isolating. You 161 would think it would be the opposite, but when the audience is so close to you, you have to disconnect so much from them and work so hard to create the feeling that you don't see them that you really feel isolated. Sometimes the audience, in a way, forgets that you are a real person, I guess? They're looking out the window. They're taking pictures of you. They're maybe doing something with their phones, or looking at their programs, or digging in their purse, and they forget that you're right there, and you see them and what they're doing. So it was very isolating. On the one hand that really helped my interpretation of my scene because Lucha feels very alone at that moment, and it felt very real to me. But at the same time, it was kind of a devastating thing to have to do 48 times a weekend. It was a huge challenge, but I think, I think, it really expressed, it really contributed to the music and that feeling of isolation. CD: What were your audiences like usually? Could you classify them at all? MEA: They varied so widely. It was wonderful. There were some children, which you know, were actually the best behaved of all the audience members, the most attentive. Some people were so engaged and just had their eyes locked on my face the whole time. It was really startling to have friends and acquaintances and colleagues come in the car because they were so close. You could just feel this energy from them washing over you, and those were the most fun. Sometimes people would talk to each other, and you know, and you keep singing! You gotta keep singing! You gotta keep doing your scene no matter what happens. Sometimes people would be wearing really heavy perfume, and you'd have to adjust to that, and your breathing. People would get flustered when the car would have to make a sudden stop, or something like 162 that. We were all experiencing it newly together. None of us knew what was going to happen. But our audiences were amazing, and they just rolled with everything, and were so open to everything, it was really incredible. CD: I recall when I saw your chapter, a woman sat down right next to you in the car. MEA: We made an adjustment after that. I started to put the arm rest down between me so it would be more clear where people should sit. That happened to us a lot, people would get really close. The funny thing is about that circumstance, and I didn't do this in Hopscotch because it wasn't appropriate to break character, but in Invisible Cities, we would have people get so close, and we wouldn't break character. But at the end, our staging directions were to look in people's eyes. All of a sudden, once you finally look them in the face, they automatically restore that distance. I think that’s what's so interesting about these unusual circumstances: people start to see artists as purely art, pieces of art. They do things that they wouldn't normally do to strangers like getting so close to them. It was really interesting for me because on the one hand, you know, it’s totally immersive. But on the other it’s a little bit dehumanizing because you're just like, “How close is this person going to get to me? Are they going to touch me? Are they gonna do this? what are they gonna do?” I understand that people wanted to explore this situation as far as possible because it was so unusual and it was such an interesting experience. I totally understand that, but, you know, at the end of the day, I'm a singer and I love it when the audience sit’s back and just enjoys the music. CD: At what point in the process did you first see the score? How did you react? 163 MEA: All the pieces didn't really come together until we really started doing the tech rehearsals. None of us understood what was going on until we were actually there doing it. It’s funny because [when I saw] the music, I was so excited to have kind of a solo scene. After the first couple weekends, I was so exhausted and so lonesome in my car that I would have given anything to be in a big ensemble scene with a million other performers and taking a little bit of a break. I think what was so special about my scene is that it completely stood on it’s own for me. It was a real person on that page having a moment that I felt myself in. [It’s the moment of] feeling alone in pursuing your dreams, and trying to let go of things that you feel are holding you back. That for me carried the whole thing. The music and [librettist] Mandy [Kahn’s] lyrics especially, Suzanna's words to me in the song, just moved me so much that I knew it would be fine. I knew what ever else was happening that this scene was going to be very real and very powerful. CD: It was very powerful. You managed to conjure up so much sadness. How do you get your head in that space? MEA: I had to dial it back a lot, after the first couple weekends. It was taking such a toll on me physically because I was crying real tears. That wasn't planned at first, but it felt right with this scene in that moment. But after a few weekends, I was just getting so tired that I had to bring it back a little bit. I still wanted to keep that sadness and that moment, but it was very difficult. I found it really interesting because as an opera singer, you can never cry on stage normally because you have a big room to fill, and that will really inhibit your singing. But in this small space in the car, I found that I could choke up a little bit and still sing. After a while, it just became automatic. That moment in the music came, and I would just start to tear up. It got to the 164 point when I decided to stop crying, I would literally have to hold it back and tell myself not to cry because I had to keep singing and save my voice. It’s just…it’s just-- was just such a real moment for me, that moment when she says, you know, "I've had enough loss. I've had enough. I don't need, I don't need to think about this anymore. It’s too hard, and I feel left behind," and then Suzanna's voice comes in and says, "You've never been alone. We've always been with you." It still chokes me up because anyone who's lost someone they love can relate to that feeling: feeling like they’re gone. Then you get a reminder in your life that they're not, and that still gets me. It’s such a powerful human moment that, it’s just, it just is. You have to respond to it the way that you feel it in life. There's no suspension of disbelief. Sorry (crying) CD: Take a minute! MEA: Oh my God, thank you. I'm so ramble-y. CD: I love it! CD: Tell me about the finale. MEA: Oh yeah, more tears, want to come back to that one? CD: Tell me how you got involved with The Industry. MEA: I just feel so lucky. They had maybe one event, and I had gone to it. I was working part time for Cadenza Artists Management, and one of our clients is this wonderful, incredible singer, Laurie Rueben, who Yuval had worked with at Vox in NY. She sent me an email saying, "Hey I 165 think this wonderful director Yuval Sharon is starting a company in LA. Could you let my agent know to reach out to him?” So I reached out to him and set up a meeting between him and my boss. He told her about Crescent City, the first opera that The Industry was going to produce. It’s about New Orleans, and I lived in New Orleans and love it very very much. I lived there directly post Katrina, and Crescent City is about a flood that comes to a city very much like New Orleans. He told all this to my boss, and she amazingly called me and said, “I don't know what this is going to be, but you have to go sing for this, because this is, whatever it is, it’s something that you're right for.” I went in not knowing anything about Yuval [Sharon] and Marc [Lowenstein] or Anne [LeBaron], the composer, and I sang Mozart for them, I think. They gave me the music for the nurses who get stranded in this hospital, and they amazingly and generously gave us three weeks to live with that music and bring it back to the call back. I don’t know what possessed me, but I looked at this music, and it was so interesting and so vivid and alive. So much of it seemed to have [librettist] Douglas [Kearney’s] words-- just seemed to know so many secrets about New Orleans that most people outside the city weren't supposed to know about. So I just, I crammed. I learned both parts and almost memorized them, and I went into that audition just determined to get it right. Marc was so kind to me and basically let me know that I'd learned it very well, and I was so excited to get that call. That was my first show with The Industry, and I've been lucky enough to work with them on every production since. It’s just been--It’s just been incredible. 166 CD: What are they like to work with? MEA: They're wonderful. They were really my first big contract after grad school, my first big solo contract, and I was so intimidated because the other singers they had were amazing. You know, Timur [Bekbosunov] and the other nurse was Jian Yang, who not only was a former Adler Fellow from San Francisco Opera, but just had a baby four months ago and was still up there in those costumes and up on that set with me. And Gwendolyn Brown, who was just an incredible voice and had sung all over the world. I felt so intimidated, but everyone was so kind and so encouraging. Yuval has a very strong vision, but he's such a hands-off director when it comes to the singers. He gives you a sense of how he sees the scene and really lets you explore it. I've changed so many things in the course of production that he's just let me go with. It’s very freeing that way. At first it’s scary! Because we like to have instructions to follow, but it just allows you to play so much and be so free and really take ownership of your role. I think that’s the strongest thing for me-- because I felt myself to be such a part of the creative process with the characters I've played in these shows, I really feel ownership of them, and that comes through in performance I think. CD: Were you able to that with Hopscotch? There were so many variables. MEA: Sometimes when I get vocally tired, I would adjust things in the music, like maybe take one note, the first high note down the octave or maybe not sing the low Gs and sing them up the octave, or really pull back on some of the dynamics. Marc Lowenstein is one of my favorite people to work with. You're never going to have a tense rehearsal with Marc. No one's going to feel uncomfortable, and he's just such an incredible 167 musician. He's the only conductor that I've ever met who can tell you you're singing a wrong note and make you laugh at the same time. Normally you get really defensive about that, but he makes you feel so comfortable and trusted. It’s always a blast. He asked me when we worked on the music what I thought, and whether I'd be able to sing it as many times as we needed to. [He] really listened and really cared about me, and that's the best thing you can do for a singer is to make them feel heard and cared about. Then we'll do anything you want. I love you Marc, if you're watching this! CD: How does Hopscotch relate to your body of work? MEA: Time will tell! After this I'm going to audition for a lot of more standard repertoire and more standard companies. A lot of time they have no idea what it means on my resume, and they'll ask me about it. I explain, and they look even more confused. I don’t know [where] it will take me, I'm just proud to do it. I'm so proud of what we created, and that we've done these crazy things and made them work. I think people can tell that when I talk about the work that I've done. It’s very freeing to not care whether people think that it’s great or not. I mean, I really don’t. I'm so proud of the work that we've done. They can google it and find out how amazing it is. They don’t have to take my word for it. CD: How do you think Hopscotch might fit in to opera in general? Will it have an impact on the genre? MEA: I was lucky enough to preview the other routes during their rehearsals, and it just felt like being in a movie. It felt so cinematic and breathtaking, like a rollercoaster really. You have to give up any sense of autonomy. You're just completely at the mercy of the show, which is great. 168 I think that that is something that opera companies will want to latch onto because we feel, a lot of the time, [in] our art form, we're at the mercy of the audiences-- whether they come or whether they don't. This was very much the opposite. We only have a small number of seats, but when you take them, you're completely at our mercy. There's very [few] ways that you're in control in this show. We were in the driver’s seat, very literally. So, I think that that is something that opera companies might latch onto as a way to not just bring the art form to different audiences and different locations, but to really, to be empowered, to be empowered to keep exploring and to not be scared by budgets and hanging on to traditional repertoire, but to feel the power of doing something so new and innovative, and what that can do for a company. CD: I think so too. So, I noticed, your car wasn’t livestreamed. Why? MEA: I don't know. I think the area that we were in, we were having a real problem with cell phone reception. I remember when we were in rehearsals, they tried to stream it a lot, and that must…they didn't really tell me. I think the reception was a big problem, and the wiring. My limo was smaller and we already had so many things plugged in for the electronics. I don't know why there wasn't another camera in my car. I think it’s because the audience was so close to me that an audience member's head probably would have been blocking the camera at all times, and then there was no reception on the cell phone. I think we already had one light, and it would have been really hot and difficult to add another light in there to make me visible, and I think they liked the moodiness of the lighting for my scene especially. So I don’t know, but that was my guess. CD: Tell me about the Finale. 169 MEA: Ah the Finale, it’s so. All of the show, I was just like, "Get out of my head, people!" This is too intimate! Jane, actually, Jane Stephens Rosenthal who wrote the text of the Finale-- we would take our breaks together at the Chapter 2 site. [I asked her], “How do you know all the things that are running through my head all the time?” And she laughed. It’s just so true to real life that litany of things we’re constantly reminding ourselves to do, and to think about, and not think about, and worry about, and not worry about. I was already taken with that. I just happened to mention to Yuval at the first rehearsal--again, Yuval just lets you run with your ideas-- that I'd love to have some sort of moment with Suzanna, a moment of recognition, of finding her. Yuval loved that, and it turned into this huge moment at the end of the scene. I had no idea [it] was going to do that, but for me, it was very important. It became more and more important for my character because she's so isolated. Actually I think it turned the tables on the narrative of the show. So much of the show she's searching for Jameson, and in the finale, I decided to search for Suzanna. I don’t know if this came across, but I was walking through the crowd, singing my litany, but trying to actively look among the faces for a person that I didn't even know what she would look like. Yuval told us to try not to run into each other until the end-- try not to see each other. I would see the back of Suzanna's head, but not recognize her, and go in a different direction. To look in her eyes at the end of the show, after all that searching and find myself… I mean, I would be thrilled if I could, in my later life, be anything like Suzanna Guzmán! So the idea of her being my future is just a beautiful one in the first place. But she's such an amazing spirit and person and you just feel all this warmth flooding from her every time you’re near her. To see that across a sea of people and find her. I tried to communicate the shock of finally seeing her and realizing who she was. She just sent this love, so much when she would look at me. I was always a puddle of tears at the end because it was so beautiful to just stand there after 170 feeling so alone all day and then finally getting this beautiful moment. It was just… it was just incredible CD: She had almost exactly the same thing to say! MEA: I felt like I won the lottery when Yuval decided to put that at the end of the show. It was just something that I wanted to do for myself. I didn't really expect more than a couple of audience members to even notice it when we did it. But then to have everybody really feel that was just so special. I'm going to treasure that a lot. I hope there's pictures of it. I'm sure I’m just completely a meltdown, but it was really incredible. CD: Let’s talk about the media coverage. What questions would you like Alex Ross of The New Yorker to ask? MEA: I think for me, what’s been interesting about all the media coverage of Hopscotch— this happened a little bit with Invisible Cities too-- is that what we're doing as singers, a lot of the time, isn't mentioned, which is really interesting for an opera. There's not a lot of commentary on the quality of the singing or the individual performance. For Hopscotch, there's just too many of us, you can't really do that. I would have him ask, “Physically and vocally, how did we do it?” I've asked a lot of my cast mates, just physically what we had to do. I really appreciated he said, that it was on a Wagnerian scale. It was so demanding physically, and I would be really interested to know what everybody else's process is was for preparing. I had like 3 bottles of water and throat lozenges stuffed in my costume, all sorts of tricks and things like that. I would stretch [my muscles] in the car between audience member [rotations]. I would love for 171 people to know how much work we put into these shows, and how physically demanding it was. I think we can all be really proud that we did it. CD: Agreed, did you ever have costume problems? MEA: They um changed my dress after the first previews because my knees were showing a lot, and they were worried about my skirt riding up. Which is true, when you're sitting down in a car all day shifting around, things move, and you don't notice. So that was definitely an issue. It was dealing with the weather sometimes. If you're really hot in that car, you can't have the AC blasting all the time or else you're going to run out of gas. You can’t have it too loud because you've got to sing over it. You can't have it blasting in your face because it dries your throat out. So how do you adjust to all those things and keep your sweater on when you're melting? Then it starts to get cold. How do you communicate to your stage manager that now it’s freezing in the car, and we've got to keep everybody warm? The audiences [wanted] to adjust the air flow on their faces. It was interesting. It was all so different. There's so many variables, so many different little things that we all had to think about and adjust to on the fly. I think that’s definitely our achievement. The biggest achievement is that we still made music with all of those. I really hope that that people remember that--- that we made music. It wasn't just about cars and getting around LA. It was about making music still. CD: That was my biggest problem with the Mark Swed's review. He got hung up on the mechanics. MEA: I hope the music gets the recognition it deserves because the music that Marc [Lowenstein] and Mandy [Kahn] wrote for me and Suzanna, at the very least, is just stunning. So 172 many of the other pieces… the scene in the Bradbury Building was just… I could have watched it 20 times in a row. What Delaram [Kamareh] did to sing that so many times is unheard of. It’s unheard of. She was, she is absolutely incredible. I remember going to see it in the preview. I didn't realize there was no AC in the vestibule of the Bradbury Building. And there she is in this fleece coat, and of course she looked stunning. I completely understood why they wanted her to keep it on, but it was super human. That’s not a usual thing that we're asked to do as singers, to be so physically uncomfortable a lot of the time. The fact that we made it look easier than it was is great. People that know singing and know singers will realize how difficult [it is] what Delaram did. Climbing all those stairs in flat shoes and a coat and still sing so brilliantly is just…she takes my breath away. It was incredible. CD: Did you get to see any other chapters? MEA: Chapter 15 [A Fortune, in Chinatown Plaza] is the one right after [mine]. I wish Justine and I had had more time to talk about what was going on. It was great that we had very different interpretations of Lucha, from what I could tell from seeing her scene. We both felt the sadness a lot. Maybe we'll get together and talk about it. I'd love to talk to her about that, about how she read that scene, because it’s so much of the same thing [with] the fortune teller and the phone call. I'll have to ask Yuval if this is on purpose--I've told him about it, but I don’t remember if he specifically put that block on the route because of it-- but there is a palm reader on Soto Street, that we drive by [on my route], and I always try and really look at it, and get the audience to look at it, and see it. A couple of times in the repetitions, it’s worked out perfectly where I'm about to hang up on the phone call, and I see the [fortune teller’s store] and stop, and it’s worked out beautifully. Actually one of the times is when Yuval's brother and sister, who I've known since 173 Crescent City and adore, they were in the car when it was perfectly timed. It was just amazing. It was amazing! They, of course, were completely immersed and just so attentive and with me in the scene. It was incredible. I don’t think the audience knows that they contribute so much. Some audiences were really hard to sing for because we didn't know how they were feeling at all. Other audiences, you felt like you were just riding their energy the whole time. It’s very powerful. Maria Elena Altany has worked on every project by The Industry since 2012. She played Nurse Marissa in their debut production, Crescent City by Anne LeBaron, Child in Winter’s Child by Ellen Reid, soprano in Invisible Cities, and Lucha in Hopscotch. 174 FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: DELARAM KAMAREH 62 Delaram Kamareh and I met at Bar Bouchon in Beverly Hills on November 19, 2015 as she prepared for the final weekend of Hopscotch. Kamareh’s chapter, “The Other Woman,” is particularly physically taxing. Her iteration of Lucha moves through the levels of the Bradbury Building in Downtown, Los Angeles. Kamareh sipped fresh vegetable juice with pineapple as she told me about the unique experience of performing in Hopscotch and the lengths she goes to for her craft. Corinne DeWitt: What brought you to LA? Delaram Kamareh: I was a citizen already. My mother married an Irish American, I don’t know, in the ‘70’s or something. So thank you Bill Cochran. I was at the point that I wanted to pursue my music. There still isn't, but at that time, especially, which was eight years ago-- it was a very strange period, very suppressed in Iran. It wasn't a very good time. So musically, I decided to just move. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to pursue something in the arts. CD: Would you sing in Iran? DK: I did sing. I always sang since I was like three, you know? It was just something that I did. I didn't think about having a career in it until I moved here. I didn't study classical music in Iran, in fact. There are very few teachers. Maybe there is one now, but at the time there was nobody. But I did study the piano. There was a conservatory there, excellent musicians. But it’s limited 62 Kamareh, Delaram. "A Word with Delaram Kamareh." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. 175 because the female voice is prohibited. You can't really sing solos in public, but choir is okay. There's a grey area. It’s the law. It’s the country's law. Mostly the pop stars, well Iranian Pop music, they're mostly men, the ones that are in the country. So there's very little avenue to excel as a singer. You can do traditional folkloric music for example. It was pretty taboo at the time. Now it’s changing. They're doing operas now in Iran for the first time after the revolution. They did the Magic Flute there. Amazing. Oh wow, it’s so exciting. I didn't attend, so I don't know exactly under what circumstances it was, but I believe that things are opening up a little bit, so you know. CD: Have you been back? DK: Yes, I've been back. Not too many times. Two or three times. I try to go back as often as I can. At the same time, in the U.S. we have this working dilemma-- we want to do things, so if you're away from here, you feel guilty. I’ve been working. I try to balance. CD: What are you working on? DK: Oh my god, always brewing different things. Some of them I can't talk about, most of them, because until I sign them, I can't really talk about them, hush hush. But I am working on some big stuff, an opera premiere in Ireland maybe. That's exciting. And a big concert in Chicago. Cant say anymore. CD: So how did you get into opera then? DK: The biggest question on earth. It just chose me, you know. I fell into it, and I became obsessed with it, and it just kind of grew from there. It was just an inevitability for me. I always 176 say, you know, on stage, it’s okay to be exaggerated. It’s accepted on stage, to do whatever the hell it is that I do. And in real life, it’s not. So the real me is okay to be real on stage. It’s great. So for me, it was more of that kind of freedom to express myself on stage, and it’s okay, and it’s not too much, not too intense, nothing is too much, it’s going to be ok, you know? Different circumstances led me to where I am today. CD: How did you get involved with The Industry? DK: I auditioned for them. It was during Invisible Cities, they were casting Invisible Cities, and I just went in. I sang, I did my thing. A couple months later, I get a call back, and they're like, “We want you to be part of it.” And I was just like, "Oh my God!" I was in my back yard jumping up and down talking to Yuval, and it was very exciting for me. I have to say. CD: What was your first impression of working with The Industry? How are they like other opera organizations? DK: They're not like any other organization. They are an organized group of people who are doing incredibly difficult things to pull off. But they're just… for me, it feels like home, like they're my family, like my musical family in LA. They're a smaller group. I know all of them personally, and you know, I was with them sort of from the beginning and I want to be with them until the end. I'm just curious what Yuval is going to ask me to do next time. CD: How did he tell you about your chapter? 177 DK: Honestly I don’t really remember. It’s all a blur now. It’s been awhile, but he did talk about this project. He said it’s going to be even more intense than Invisible Cities. Me being me, I love it. So I said, "Great, bring it on. I'm in." You can’t really be laid back when you have such a difficult endeavor. This project, Hopscotch, I don’t even know how they're… I don’t even know. It’s like a creature! It’s like a well-oiled machine that every little thing is connected to the other, and if one fails, the whole body of work will collapse. But they’re just keeping it going. It’s unbelievable. CD: What’s it like performing on stage versus on site? DK: There are so many differences. For me this whole public performance started in Invisible Cities. You’re in a train station and most of the people didn't know what was going on. You had this constant variable, unknown variable. We had to be on our toes to figure out if, sometimes somebody was standing in the middle of where I'm supposed to be standing. What am I supposed to do, move him? In the middle of performance? I can’t do that. I would just figure it out. There are many stories I can tell you about that. But public performance like this is great. [The bartender arrives with the beverage Kamareh had ordered: green juice with pineapple and leafy vegetables.] Ah wonderful, yay. Cheers. One more week of performance, and then I can drink. (She tastes it). Mmm. Yes. Ok. So on stage, okay, as a performer, I’m in control. I have control over what the audience sees, for instance. right? It’s not a 3-D experience. The audience member cannot go stand behind me, you 178 know? I present what I choose to show. Also, it’s a controlled environment, there is light on me. I can’t see them. I'm there to [sing], and they're there looking at me, basically. In this situation [Hopscotch], it’s psychologically interesting because it gives a lot of power to the audience. They're at the same level as I am walking. They can stand anywhere they want. They can go stand behind me if they want. It can be a little unnerving at first. During Invisible Cities, I had such an overwhelming kind of experience [with] this-- there were so many people around that Hopscotch is like nothing [with] just a few people down in the Bradbury Building. Doesn't really affect me at all. Now. How the audience members follow me, that’s’ a different story. I still can see them. I know that you're here, and I'm performing for you. I'm really intensely into my character, and, of course, I don’t look at you and acknowledge your presence, but I still can see you. Sometimes the audience does strange things-- they put their phone right here, and they're trying to take a picture, and it can be distracting. Sometimes I wonder…God, I mean, really? I'm doing the most intense coloratura virtuosic passage for you and you're taking pictures of the wall, you know? I can see you. (laughter). It happens very rarely, but it does happen sometimes. So you know it’s an interesting experience, I have to say. Overall, yes, it does give the audience more power than they would have usually in a more traditional setting. CD: What have you thought about the audiences? DK: Most of the time I can't really see them. There's the scene in the elevator when we go up, and I can sometimes take a peak if they're not looking at me. I don't want to be judgmental, but they look like cultivated people for the most part. Pretty much everybody knows not to speak and treat it as a performance in a more traditional stage. CD: Tell me about your experience crammed in the Bradbury Building elevator. 179 DK: I definitely get a sense of the energy from them there most. I can feel, even if I don’t look at them. I can feel their energy in the elevator, whether they're bored (which never happens of course), or, I don't know, very excited. Sometimes I can just see people are flabbergasted. They're like, "Oh my God!" That gives me a good feeling because of those very close few moments. That gives me energy, as a performer, to go on. CD: What is the Bradbury Building like to sing in? DK: Ideal. CD: Ideal? DK: It’s like a cathedral. The voice just soars, perfect reverb. It’s everything I wish for. But I have to say, since this is not a traditional performing experience, it’s is basically like a marathon because the audience doesn't realize that the performers are performing these pieces of music, like 10 or 15 minutes of music, 24 times a day. So it becomes a marathon more than a sprint. It is normal so for a sprint [to] give 150%. You just burn it out. But for a marathon, you have to control and kind of hold back at times. That's difficult in a building like the Bradbury Building where I just want to fill it up with my voice. CD: Tell me about your process? How do you decide when to hold back? DK: Such a good question. It’s an infinite amount of improvisation. Those little choices that I make just depends on how my voice is feeling that rotation. Sometimes I take it an octave lower. But purely in a technical sense, preparing for a piece like this, for a performance like this…let me explain it properly: in a normal operatic experience or a concert or what not, you would have 180 maximum an hour, hour and 20 minutes, maximum of singing, of full on singing. MAXIMUM. This project is basically four and half hours, if not more, of non-stop singing. So I don't stop at any point here. I keep going. Because of that, getting into it is just technique. If you're not solid-- it’s like when you go to the chiropractor, you know? If you're not solid with the technique, if your voice is not relatively good to perfect condition, you can you lose your voice doing something like this. So technique is paramount. Preparing for this piece, I had to figure out how to modify, in a way, my technique for this particular piece. Cause, yes, it has many virtuosic moments. We didn't want to cut those out, what's the fun? But I have to sustain it over and over and over again without losing my voice. So how does that work? Just switching between resonances and constants, because if I use too much of this resonance, it’s not good. If I use too much of this resonance, it’s… So it’s constant switching back and forth between the piece. Now. Where I do it? I think by muscle memory, it becomes certain places. I switch back and forth. That's how I technically can get through it. Now in terms of performance, that's a different story. CD: How do you prepare for your performance? DK: That's more of a mental frame of mind. How I start my day is very important because it’s going to be a long day. Normally I would give one hundred percent of everything, which helps each other. If you are physically evoking that, it will come up in your performance, in your acting as well. But with this case, I have to kind of, hold back vocally to make it through the day as opposed to what I would usually do. But at the same time, that requires me to give double the energy acting wise so that the audience can be affected emotionally, because that’s the whole point, I think. CD: Tell me about that shriek that you have. 181 DK: Let me tell you the story behind that crazy scream. So I meet with Veronika [Krausas], the composer, and (laughter), me being the hubris soprano that I am, I go to her and I say, "Oh Veronika, you're writing this piece for me. I have a high B flat above high C that I sing in public. So don’t worry, just do crazy coloratura, just do anything you want. (laughter). So then, she actually puts that in the score! At first I was like, “Oh wow, so cool, this is great!” But then I started to practice it and trying to learn it, and I was tired after five times of singing it. So I thought, “Good God, how am I?” I mean, you get paid to do it once, it’s a miracle! Now I have to do it 24 times? So I have to go back to her and say, "Listen, Veronika. Um, thank you for putting it, but you know, do I get some liberty on how to…?” Don't get me wrong, I still have the high note! But it’s all about how I get there. So that's how I created this scream which also made sense in the context. I am looking at Jameson and that other woman, and it’s a moment that I'm just completely unraveling, emotionally speaking. So it totally made sense. It was created at first [as] this musical idea that she wrote. I took that and interpreted it to have a little bit of an easier time on my voice. I created this release so it’s a little bit easier but just as effective to do it 24 times. CD: Well, 24 times in one day, but then again the next day! DK: Yes (laughter) CD: What is it like to work with Veronika? DK: Oh great. So great! I saw it, I learned it. I loved it. I interpreted it, and it all came together. It didn't make as much sense in the actual musical rehearsal that we had, like in a room. But then after putting the blocking and the movements in the building…The guys, the improvisational 182 aspect, when I stopped to just really think about it, it became second nature in muscle memory. It just fit like a glove. It was perfect. CD: Tell me about your rehearsal process. DK: We did not have many rehearsals, I think, maybe two or three. We just jumped into preview performances, which still were performances even though it was sort of a rehearsal situation, just so we could metabolize the space and the process. We didn't have much but, we didn't really need it. We're just rehearsing it so many times that by opening day, it was just it was part of the body, it was part of the mind. CD: How well was the technology integrated? DK: Again, Invisible Cities for me was the ultimate test because there were 20- 50 cameras in my face, overwhelmingly so at times. I had to make my way through a crowd which wouldn't even move! So this is tiny on that scale comparatively speaking. It doesn't affect me. I treat the camera as a fifth audience member. CD: What kind of Lucha are you supposed to be? DK: Yuval said, “I'm putting you in the Bradbury Building!” I said, “Yes!” He said it’s going to be a nightmare noir scene. It is set in the ‘40’s. My Lucha, is basically a Freudian Lucha. It’s the subconscious of Lucha. The dark, very dark, very insecure…it’s her subliminal side, definitely. She's not a dark character… She can be a dark character. There's so many Luchas in the opera. She certainly can be a dark character. I don’t think, in my scene, she's a dark character. I think 183 she is manifesting her fears. She's trying to work through it subconsciously in my scene. You're a voyeur into, in my opinion, into her way of dealing with the disappearance of Jameson. CD: How did you feel about the environment as film noir? DK: The musicians are fantastic, all of them. Such champions. The costume designer, of course, creating that, and the dancers are a big part of it. It just works CD: Did you personally ever start to adopt the sensation of the environment? DK: (Laughter) It’s a very interesting question. In the beginning, yes. The very first performances, or even rehearsals, I felt emotionally drained after. I just felt…ugh. I felt the character so much. When I was reaching for Jameson for instance, that scene with the guitar, my hands were really shaking. For real! When I would just (exhale), that's actually how, in reality I felt. But then, as [with] anything which you do over and over and over, it becomes a sort of meditation. It’s the strangest performance experience I've ever had. It all depends. There's so many variables. In the beginning, I felt it more. After a while, it switches. Sometimes I enjoy it. I'm like (laughter), “Oh, there he [Jameson] goes, kissing that woman again, that woman in red,” (laughter). CD: You're getting crazier! DK: Yes, yes! In a sick way, I enjoy it! (laughter) It became fun. It was like a game, you know? (laughter). We had a lot of jokes with the actors and the dancers. Like: maybe Jameson's just into red heads. Maybe I should go steal that red wig and put it on my head. CD: A lot of Luchas are redheads. 184 DK: It’s just been so well thought of. After a while, you perform it…how many times have I performed it? Probably 500 times? 600 times? I don’t even know--I didn't count. But it’s been a lot. So it’s fascinating that way. CD: Do you ever get sick of performing it? DK: (laughter) If I do, I wouldn't tell. (laughter). Honestly, something that is so all consuming. It really does consume my life during the week as you can see. I have to modify everything I do because I simply don't want to risk anything. Some mornings it’s just hard to get up and go to work. Especially because it’s a daytime performance. You know how singers like to sleep until 2pm and then go to their 7:30pm performance. Sometimes it’s harder to go to work, just like any other job. It is kind of unique in that way because there's so many of these performances. CD: What do you do on your 20 minute breaks? DK: Usually I have two choices. I can use the restroom or I can get something to eat. (laughter) usually. Sometimes, if I’m really high and energetic from my coffee that I had in the morning, my four shots of espresso, I can do both. But it’s all about time management. Just like everything else in the opera. You have to choose what you want to do. CD: How do you keep your chapter to ten minutes? DK: I can tell from the body language of Anthony, my usher. Usually if he's feeling [urgent, I can tell]. He's the one with the time-- but we can't really communicate during my scene. He's usually just kind of guiding the audience along, but not really communicating, of course, not with me. I can usually tell by his body language. If he's fidgety and moving forward a little 185 quicker, I know that, “Ok, I need to…” This time, Lucha is just frantic. She's not pensive and introspective, she's just completely crazy frantic and can’t wait to get to the next part of her blocking. Sometimes when Anthony is sort of lingering back, and I can’t see him anywhere, I know that I have more time to spend, so I'll do something different. I'll take more time. I'll do a big pause. Depends on what Lucha's doing at the moment, really. CD: Tell me about the challenges of your specific location. DK: The heat in the beginning of our opera, absolutely, the heat was a problem. Because I’m wearing a coat, and going up in the Bradbury Building, the top floor was very hot because the roof is open glass. The heat was just unbelievable up there. There are things like, for the longest time, had a problem with my shoes, so I just decided to go barefoot for the whole thing. Of course, that had it’s problems, and eventually I had to switch back to my shoes after breaking them in a little bit. But walking barefoot had problems because I come down these stairs, and it’s all marble floors. My body was done. I would get a massage after every performance. I really felt it. With timing, some cars are early, some cars are late. I can’t be standing there like this, in character the entire time. I have to drink water in those like one or two minutes that I have between the performances. Or sometimes I would have the water bottle in my hand and would be drinking it, and then audience is coming in, and I have to throw away the water bottle and make it work. CD: How fast are the transitions? 186 DK: It’s around two and a half minutes on average. Sometimes it’s longer if a car is late. Sometimes even it’s back to back, literally. The audience goes out and another audience comes in, and I have no time to drink water, no time to come out of character, just have to continue. CD: Have you had to break character? DK: I wouldn't give myself a hard time if I had to. I think there was once, I don’t remember what it was but, I was about to…Something happened with the audience, and I couldn't help myself but laugh. But when I do, I always make it work. The audience being four people, sure they have a lot of control and a lot of power, but I also have control because I can see where they're standing, and I can just take my back to them and do my thing. When they see me, I go back into character. I don’t remember it was something very funny. Doing this so many times, the thing is not to make it the same all the same because you’re going to go crazy. It’s just not going to happen. So the dancers, the musicians and myself-- we try to change it up every performance a little bit to keep that sense of moral up psychologically. CD: What’s an example of a change you make? DK: One of these times, I got out of the elevator, and I'm always expecting to see a wall. Then I go and say, "Oh Jameson, are you there, are you asleep? what's keeping you from me?" And look down. Sometimes I look down, and one of the dancers is making a face at me (laughter). Usually I can control myself, but this time, I walked out and saw Vikrum [Devasthali], our guitar player there with the sunglasses just standing there. It was hilarious. It was really, really….I didn't expect it, so I walk out, and I had to turn away, CD: Did anybody notice? 187 DK: I think, my character at that point is so hysterical that sometimes if I have a laugh or a funny face, they just assume it’s part of her madness. It’s basically a mad scene, like Lucia [di Lammermoor] but it’s Lucha. Most of the time it works. I don’t often do that because I feel the presence. I don’t want to get out of character. But that one…we have many funny moments, of course, I can’t even count. CD: What are some other moments? DK: We have our internal jokes that people don’t know about all the time, basically throughout the whole thing. People think it’s such a dark scene, and I am so tortured the whole time, feeling it, and all that. But it’s part of acting and performance, you know. At the same time, we have to keep our own spirit’s up in order to carry on and have a great quality performance. The death of the performance is when the energy drops. Anything that keeps the energy up is great because being there all the time so many times is also not healthy. You start to drop in energy, and that’s my number one, I guess, tip or trick, whatever you want to call it, for surviving a tour de force of performances back to back two days in a row of this caliber. CD: How aware are you of the other chapters? DK: The only thing I see is the glimpse that I catch in the Finale where I go to the Central Hub, where I can see on the monitors briefly. I get an idea of what they look like. Yuval did explain it to us, all of us, a long time ago when we first started, each and every body's chapter in detail. So I do have an understanding of everybody's chapter. Unfortunately, I missed the viewing party that was thrown for the performers because I had to rest my voice that day. But I have an idea, and I read all the articles. I follow everybody's page. 188 CD: What have you thought of the articles? DK: I agree with Oscar Wilde on this, you know, "It’s better to evoke some sort of feeling than not at all." And I think [with] any of these reviews, whether they're questioning things or absolutely ecstatic about the whole thing, people have [opinions]… this is what art is! Different opinions, subjective. But I think, good art, always evokes that kind of reaction, some kind of reaction, good or bad. CD: Let’s talk about the livestream. Did you have an audience member ever put the camera too close to you? DK: Yes, yes like right here! I always joke that you can always tell the film students from the other ones because that guy is like right there running with me, like a pro camera man. I'm like, “I need these few seconds to myself when my back is to you, thank you very much!” (laughter) “Since you're here the entire time, give me my space, please! I want to turn away from you for three seconds. Please!” But it’s kind of funny. Sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes it’s exciting, it depends. It really depends. CD: Do you ever know the audience members? DK: Sometimes I do. Sometimes I do. People who I know, I get their silhouette. I get a few seconds before they walk in to look at them. But that's if I'm ready there, ready to go, prepared. Sometimes I'm drinking or I've turned around to stretch, and I hear the door opening and Natalie say, “Chapter 25,” and then I have to turn around. Then I can’t really look at them. So from silhouettes sometimes, in the elevator, again, that's my chance to figure out who's who. 189 CD: Do they tell you when the VIP audience is coming through? DK: I’m a little out of the loop in that sense. I should educate myself in how these important people look. Also it’s very hard for me, because I am still in my character. I am singing intensely difficult music. I can't think about too many things. If I catch it, if I notice somebody at the very beginning, then yes. Or when I'm far away, and I, from the corner of my eye, see somebody. Other than that, I don’t have a chance, and I can’t take my mind off what I do because it’s very demanding. CD: How would you classify the music? One hundred percent opera? DK: Absolutely it’s opera. CD: There's so many other styles and sounds that I don’t associate with traditional opera music. DK: Yes, that's why it’s very cool opera. My part, for me, is definitely operatic. I would say [even that it’s] pretty traditional, because I am not modifying my technique, by any means, well other than the things that I talked about with you regarding how many times I have to do it and how I can sustain myself. Other than that, my technique is my… and singing operatically… I know there are other scenes that are not necessarily like this--I'm not very familiar with that because I am in my scene. I haven't had the chance to look at other scenes, but this is opera! Opera from the beginning of time was an art form that was ahead of everything else. It was the most all-inclusive art form. It used basically every genre of art, more or less. Of course it’s opera! 190 Yuval is doing the same now with this. Technology, at this point in history, is paramount. You can’t ignore it any more. Don't get me wrong. I love the traditional opera scene. I love baroque music. I love, absolutely love Strauss, more traditional-- even they were at the time Stravinsky, for Christ's sake, was considered intensely…I don’t know, pioneering. SO is this opera, yes! Absolutely! CD: How does Hopscotch fit into the opera scene in Los Angeles? DK: I don’t know. I'm curious. I know The Industry is, they're just so excited. I can’t wait [to see] what they come up with next. I'm still waiting for the touring opportunity for Invisible Cities. I was just so nostalgic--the other night, I was listening to the music that we recorded. I was just reminiscing. It was just such a beautiful time we had. But I think, at this point, the company has become a huge part of the city. Los Angeles is a tremendously huge city, and this is a tremendously huge endeavor, Hopscotch. It’s a project as big as the city it’s representing, so it’s perfect. CD: Will there be an Invisible Cities tour? DK: I think they're… yeah, I hope so. I think we were talking about, at the time back then, we were talking about touring in Bordeaux, at a train station in Bordeaux. But I don’t know the details on that yet. It would be beautiful to tour train stations around the world. I don’t know how this could apply to Hopscotch, ‘cause Hopscotch is so site-specific in Los Angeles, I don’t know how it could translate. I'm sure you could translate it to any city, apply it, but it’s so perfect for LA. CD: What is it like to sing in LA versus other cities? 191 DK: I think you have a lot of space to find yourself as an artist in general in LA. There are great things and not so great things just like any other city, but, here in LA there is something magical about it. I think I found myself, found my own voice to be precise, and it gave me the space to me myself. LA is very experimental at this point. You have The Industry, LA Phil. You have amazing venues. New music is very flourishing here, and there's just a lot of room for young, upcoming artists, singers, musicians, to express themselves, more than other cities perhaps. CD: Introduce yourself and your character, please, and describe Hopscotch as best you can. DK: Hello, my name is Delaram Kamareh, and I am singing Lucha in the opera Hopscotch. So my character is-- so my chapter is basically a nightmare scene where Lucha is afraid, is dreaming that Jameson has left her for another woman. In this case, the woman is in red hair and red dress. So the audience follows me or Lucha up the elevators in the Bradbury Building, the elevator in the Bradbury Building. They follow me, go down, five stories, five staircases, as I unravel, as she unravels emotionally. In the end she comes to terms, by the end of the ten minutes, she comes to terms with the fact that he's gone and she may never see him again. DK: Hopscotch is an intensely complex experience for both the audience and the performers where each cell, each little different scene, is very important to the story. Everybody creates this huge creature, this body of work, which is experienced by the audience in the end. So we're all equally as important but separate organisms that contribute to this beautiful, mysterious, exciting and strange process. Kamareh has worked previously with The Industry on Pauline Olivero’s The Nubian Word for Flowers (2013) and Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities (2014) 192 FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: JUSTINE ARONSON 63 On November 20, 2015, I met with Justine Aronson in her Highland Park home. Aronson sings the role of Lucha in Chapter 15 on the Green Route. Her character goes to a fortune teller for help deciphering the mysterious phone call from Chapter 14. Aronson sings both in the highly populated Chinatown Plaza and in a car, where she accompanies herself on a custom-made music box. Aronson is new to Los Angeles, and we spoke about how Hopscotch and The Industry has acclimated her to Los Angeles. Justine Aronson: My name is Justine Aronson, and I'm one of 19 women playing Lucha in Hopscotch. Hopscotch is an experience of all of Los Angeles in it’s most complete and mysterious way. The idea of getting into a car and not knowing where you're going, is…I was talking to a friend about it who had seen the show, and he said there's something so comforting about releasing control and just being shown something. So we're giving the audiences the gift of being shown their city. Being told a simple tale, a simple story, but one that's universal in it’s subject matter, you know? Where am I? What am I doing with my life? My chapter is all, “What am I doing with my life?” Which I think is really relatable. Hopscotch is an adventure. Corinne DeWitt: I wanted to ask you about that issue of control, it’s such a variable production. You're at the mercy of traffic and people. You're in a chapter [that is in the highly public Chinatown Plaza], but then you jump into this very intimate setting. Do you have a lot of control over the timing of things? 63 Aronson, Justine. "A Word with Justine Aronson." Interview by author. November 20, 2015. 193 JA: I personally have zero control over anything. I'm constantly watching for hand signals from the production assistant. This means one thing. This means another thing as to which particular scenes we're going to cut and which we're going to do in their full iteration. Then, her [the production assistant] particular body position-- if she stands in a certain place. That means one thing, so my job is to just stay present and notice what's going on around me. Same with the car--because I'm in the car and we go to a destination, and it’s all left turns, and then we come back from that destination and it’s all right turns. So on the one way, the aria that I sing is about a minute longer than coming back. But also, sometimes we get stuck at the light. Also sometimes there is road construction. So I have to decide which phrases am I going to cut. This is giving the performer so much power over what the composer wrote-- what am I going to cut? What am I going to skip to? What am I going to improvise over? What am I going to add? Just totally being at the mercy of the elements of traffic, of weather-- one day it was rainy and cold and windy and really unpleasant, but just staying in the moment and listening and paying attention. CD: How do you decide which phrases to exclude? How do you add? JA: I've done it so many times. It was very difficult the first couple runs to figure it out. I guess I need to do this one again, but I figured it out. I have visual cues of where I am in the car-- if I'm here by this phrase, I sing this phrase next. If I'm here at this phrase, I cut to this phrase next. Then, the last phrase that I sing is kind of repeatable, and I don’t have to do it too many times. It’s never a case where I’m in the car for five minutes longer than I'm supposed to be, so I just repeat it maybe one or two times, and it fills the time. 194 CD: Describe your character. Who is yours out of so many different iterations of Lucha? JA: So Lucha has just gotten married to Jameson. Their courtship was very feverish, and it seemed to her to be really meant to be and ordained by the universe in a very special way, and I can identify with that. Then she marries this wonderful man who's so mysterious, and their marriage is not what she hoped it would be. He's quiet. I think this is in one of the animations: he's reserved, and he doesn't interact with her. He's getting deeper and deeper into this esoteric research about the brain and neuroscience, and he's slipping away from her. It’s Eurydice. He's slipping away. She just doesn't know what to do. She's made this choice. She's married this man. She's made a huge choice, and she's saying, "Why? This isn't… I'm not happy? Why am I not happy? What do I do?" So it’s at that point that we meet Lucha going to see the fortune teller, Lila. She has her cards read, and that's what you see in my scene. This is a fortune teller she's already visited who told her, "You'll get this phone call," and she's just received the phone call. So she says to the fortune teller, "How did you know? You told me something that came true so you must be able to tell me something else about my life? There's so many variables. Please help me. Please help me figure my shit out, please help me figure myself out!” She's very desperate, and she's confused, and she's sad. It’s just before the turning point. She pull's the death card and the fortune teller says, "It's not a literal death, it’s transformation--Death with self-knowledge, through knowing yourself, through, you know, through knowing who you are, you can transform yourself into a new life," which she does. We see her doing this at the end of the opera, but this is right before where she's like, "Oh my god." This is really in the muck. She has no idea what to do. 195 CD: Can you talk about the challenges of your location? JA: Hopscotch, on the whole, is very challenging, to be perfectly honest. It is one of, if not the most unique, challenge that I've had to face as a performer. And I sing a fair amount of contemporary music, so I'm being asked to do a lot of things that are out of my comfort zone, or things I've never done before. [I have] to navigate so many variables while still maintaining a genuine connected presence. [I’m] trying to connect to what Lucha is feeling in this very vulnerable moment while there are people everywhere, all of them with a smartphone, who aren’t people in the car, people not seeing Hopscotch, people just in public, in the square, they're all recording. A lot of them are taking pictures, a lot of them are recording, a lot of them are confused, a lot of them totally ignore it. So being out in the open, there's the people aspect of it. The people are watching you, and they're confused. And there's people outside at restaurants looking at you and taking pictures. That's kind of fun. Every once in a while, I turn around and there’s a huge crowd of people, and I just say to myself, “Well, I am totally in control of this experience right now, I’m going to sing to all of you because you are my audience.” Sometimes they're not paying attention. In addition to that kind of huge variable, there's a lot of noises. There are a lot of colorful characters in the plaza who sometimes interrupt things. One day we had tree trimming happening, so we had to totally restage the scene according to the tree trimming. We couldn't use a section of the plaza that we usually use. There was like a moped gang, that just decided… a gang of mopeds revving the engine of a moped multiple times throughout the scene. There's a burger place, so every once in a while you have numbers being shouted out, like order numbers for pickup being shouted out. So there are many many distractions. There are lots of 196 children and dogs which is fun and also distracting. There are a lot of people who approach the performers, not so much me, because I don’t really want to talk to people, so I kind of make it clear that I'm not available to be talked to. But there are other performers in my scene who get a lot of questions, like, "What are you doing? What is this? What is this about?" Which is great for the opera because we get to interact face-to-face with the audience, with the people who are hearing us. People get to put a face to what is an opera, what is an opera singer. So those are just the Chinatown challenges. Then I get into the car, and it’s not actually so much of a challenge to be navigating the transition between the two--this kind of big, macro outside to this micro inside, but performing in a limousine has it’s challenges too. You're at such close range with audience that really, what ever they’re doing affects what you're doing. You wish it wouldn't, and you wish that you could just kind of be a performer, and do a performance, but when you're this close from your audience member, the energy they're giving you has a direct correlation to what I can give back to you. It’s a huge feedback loop. So if even one person is paying really wonderful attention and giving me all of their energy, I can make a different performance than if all four people are looking out the window, which happens sometimes. They're invited to look out the window. This is for them. They've purchased the tickets. It’s about seeing where you are, and watching the landscape go by, and watching Los Angeles go by. So I'm glad they're enjoying that, but it makes a difference whether or not they're looking out the window. CD: What do you make of all the technology? JA: It’s very weird. It’s sort of like having an alien in the room a little bit, like an insect? It can sometimes be distracting. The most amazing part of this experience is getting to interact with 197 people, like lots of people in this very constructed atmosphere. To be able to observe them, like some people take the shooting, the camera very very seriously-- they get different angles, and they walk around, and they think about it. Some people clearly have not touched a device such as this in their entire life, so they're like doing it backwards. They're, like, videoing themselves or holding it sideways. There was one guy who just the whole time…. he couldn't quite do it, so that adds another element of distraction really. If people are confused by it, and I can tell they're confused by it, I feel for them. It’s very funny watching the stage manager. At one point, I've driven to the location where we switch audience packets, and I watch the stage manager try to give the camera to the group of people, and people are like, "Aahhh. I don’t want that thing.” I think they understand it’s another element to be added. CD: How do you navigate the tourist selfies and folks in Chinatown Plaza? JA: It’s amazing. It’s very difficult. It’s really hard. Julia, the woman who plays the fortune teller and I, (sigh), we sometimes kind of succumb to the temptation to [engage]. The audience can’t see me, but she can, so I'll give her a little bit of a look, like, "Oh God, wasn't that thing that just happened so crazy?" Like last weekend, we had to change some of the blocking because a bus pulled up, and then another bus pulled up-- that's another element, the traffic-- a bus pulled up so the limo couldn't go into the place, and then another bus pulled up, and then there was a mail man, and then there was another car parking. All this happened immediately, and the stage manager was like, ‘Ok go there. No, go there. No, go there. Ok, go there.’ So we were doing this thing all the way down the sidewalk, and there was someone in traffic with their window down singing opera noises at Julia. Julia, she's the fortune teller, and she kind of makes very big 198 gestures, and she just goes…” (Aronson demonstrated a middle finger arm-swinging gesture). It was very difficult for me not to be like, "Yes, Julia, yes!" (laughter) CD: How did things like that affect your perception of the score? What did you make of the music box? JA: I think the most out of the ordinary aspect of my scene is what you said. I sing accompanying myself on a music box. Um, my first reaction, was like, "Oh great, I get to learn how to do something else. I get to do another challenge. I get to push myself in a new and different way." But the experience of doing it is it’s actually very freeing as a vocalist. I'm most of the time performing with another person, with a pianist, or with an ensemble, or even if I'm lucky, with an orchestra. To be there with me, and this little tiny, baby thing, and to be in control of that thing, it’s really liberating. CD: What’s it like working with Veronika [Krausas]? Yuval [Sharon]’s vision? JA: Well Veronika and I, we met a couple times over the summer, so she could kind of hear what my voice sounded like. The aria went through many incarnations according to what my voice does [best], making sure that it lays in the right part of the voice. In terms of discussing the character and discussing who Lucha is at this point, that's actually been kind of left to me. We had one rehearsal. Plus, we heard Yuval talking about the piece as a whole, which helps inform the character. Yeah, there was one rehearsal, and then we just, kind of, just go. CD: One rehearsal? 199 JA: One rehearsal to stage it and to talk about the emotional context. Then Yuval, he checks in on the chapters, I think, to see how they're going, see how they're developing. But it’s very much in our hands. Veronika has also seen it. Veronika stopped by Chinatown, I think, once every weekend she's been there. She's seen the show. It’s mostly just a lot of positive reinforcement, I think people are very just impressed with the logistics of the thing, and the fact that it’s an Olympian, you know Wagnerian task, to do it all day, so people are just like, "Yes! Keep doing it, you're doing great! Keep going!" CD: So what's your performance day like? JA: So this is what the day is like. I wake up about maybe 8 o’clock. I prepare my lunch and my snacks for the day. We don't have a whole lot of break time, so we have to plan the food very specifically. Then I drive to Chinatown. My call is 10 o’clock, which is an hour before the first show starts. I walk into the green room, and there cast members of other chapters all in the green room, so everyone's getting ready, everyone's putting on their wigs, everyone's putting on their costumes. That hour goes by very quickly. Then at 11 o’clock, the first run begins--10:57am, I think, I have to be in place. That goes by, if I'm in the right headspace, it goes by like that. I just try to do it, be in the moment, and do it. Then we get a half hour break-- well, I should go back and tell you that I get about a two to four-minute break between every other rotation. So once the show begins, I sing a 20-minute section. I do the scene in Chinatown, get in the car, change of audience members, get back in the car, do another scene in Chinatown, 2 to 4 minutes. Then [I] do the whole thing again. In that little 2 to 4-minute break, there was one weekend where all I could do was just sit alone, not do anything, not talk to anybody, not think about anything, just breath. There are other weekends where I can talk to people and say, "Oh isn't that thing that 200 happened, that thing, that was crazy! How amazing? How are you doing? That’s great." But then in the half hour break, I eat about half of my lunch. We all like disappear into phone zone for a minute. Sometimes cast members will have text messages from other people on other routes, like other chapters, be like, "Oh my God, this crazy thing happened. Oh my God, James Franco!" James Franco came through, very serious about his camera work, James Franco was. So we check our text messages and text message whatever, eat a little bit, and then do it again. Then have another break, and then do it again. And then come home, and one is very hungry afterwards and tired. CD: What about between performance days? JA: Opening day was my birthday, so we did go out, and we had dinner, and that felt very indulgent. I definitely felt it the next day. In between days and even leading up to Hopscotch it’s just a lot of sleep, drink a lot of water, take care of yourself as best as possible. There are no subs for this show. If I got sick, no one could do, last minute what I've been doing. Same goes with any of the other Luchas. I mean, the woman rapelling down the wall, like climbing into the LA river bed?! Like who [can say], "I need a sub!" So yeah, just a lot of really concentrated self care. CD: Were you able to see any of your fellow singers perform in the show? JA: Some people were, but I wasn't able to see anything else. I know people. I'm only a recent transplant to Los Angeles, so I don’t have close friends, but I know people. I know the other singers. It’s so exciting to be in a production with so many people and have connection to so, so [many people]. This vast web of performers in Hopscotch, even though I'm only really 201 interacting with 5 or 6 of them in my scene, to know that there's this huge family of people going through--going through like it’s a war or something--but having this same intense experience as I'm having, and as my cast mates are having, it’s a very special thing. CD: Yeah I was thinking about that and how it might be thematically aligned with disjointedness and master connectivity. JA: Wow, I hadn't thought of that. Every time I talk to somebody about Hopscotch, somebody has a new insight about how their experience, about how the whole piece kind of relates thematically to it’self. Someone was saying, I was, our production assistant was saying, the fact that when audience members can see scenes in different orders. If you see everything in a different order, someone in another car sees a totally different thing. That speaks to the infallibility of memory. We're not going to remember things the same way. We're not going to all have the same experience if I'm me and you're you. We're going to remember it differently. It’s amazing. It’s so universal, you know, the story is so, as I said, just kind of simple. It’s able to sort of explode into these really universal themes, and everyone gets to have their own personal experience with it. CD: How has Hopscotch changed the way you relate to your landscape? JA: For me personally, I've driven Chinatown and never really spent a lot of time there, so yeah, I didn't even know that people came to Chinatown on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. It’s like a huge family hang. It’s really busy. So I didn't even know that. I didn't know the other on-site locations, that they were places of interest. Like I'm now really excited to go to Hollenbeck Park 202 and see what that's about, and try to see examine these other parts of LA that Yuval has deemed important, and that the audience members get to experience. CD: You're not in the Finale? JA: I don’t know. They chose one person from every scene, and I guess they couldn't have everybody be a singer, so the violinist from our scene is going to the Finale. I get done at 4:24 P.M. and then I'm done, and then I can go home, which is nice, instead of having to be carted to the Finale and then carted back. CD: I can imagine. JA: DO MORE SINGING, sing for 3 hours, then do MORE singing! CD: How does this relate to the rest of your body of work? JA: I pride myself on being able to sing very many styles and kinds of music. I can sing operatic arias and kind of a full operatic voice. I can sing as a backup singer for like indie chamber pop stuff. I can sing in an ensemble. I can sing Bach. I really try to maintain my skills at a lot of different kinds of singing, but this is a completely, this is a completely new kind of singing, not so much the outside singing, because I kind of use the big opera voice. I can do that. I can sing in a big space, but the singing to people who are this far away, it’s a totally different voice to be using. It’s an other opportunity for me to figure out another facet of my voice and my performing experience. CD: What do you think the impact of Hopscotch will be? 203 JA: I think the impact that it will have is that it’s going to expand [the minds of] both the audience members who buy tickets and the audience members who go to the Hub, but also the people in Chinatown and Hollenbeck Park, and the other public places who hear it and say, "Oh that’s an opera?" Maybe that's their only experience with opera, or maybe they read more about Hopscotch, and maybe they’re curious about The Industry's next production. Maybe they even try to see what else is going on in the opera or other experimental theater worlds. I think it opens the door to a conversation about what opera [is]. What else can it be besides sitting in an opera house watching singers on a pristine stage? Which is also a wonderful experience, and I have enjoyed many operas like that. I grew up with opera, and those are the operas that I saw. Those are the operas that I have loved, but what are the other ways of experiencing drama+music+text+costumes+set? There's so many moving pieces that we can rearrange, and that's what Yuval has done. CD: How did you get involved with The Industry? JA: Well my partner, Richard [Valitutto, pianist from gnarwhallaby, an LA-based experimental quartet that composed and performed the music for the animated chapters], played in the orchestra of Invisible Cities, and I was just enthralled with that project, like what is this?! I had just moved to New York and was [wondering] where, what’s the interesting music that's happening, what is the cutting edge version of opera, and where is that? So Richard was involved with it, and I thought to myself, “I have to work with this company, I have to work with this company.” They're doing amazing things. They're challenging what it means to be a performer, what it means to be an audience member, what it means to be watching an opera. Then I sang for them once. Then I sang for them again, and they cast me in their workshop series called First 204 Take, which was in February of this year, where I sang in two 20-minute sections of new works. So I sang a piece by Andrew McIntosh, who's music is also in Hopscotch, and a piece by a woman name Jenny Olivia Johnson, and I was cast in Hopscotch. CD: What have your audiences been like? JA: A lot of them are very young. I had like a six-year-old boy (speaking of young) come through one of the cars who was just enthralled by the whole experience. A friend who was on another route who was talking about a whole family that came through with kids, maybe around the age of ten, all of whom were just stunned, just like gobsmacked by the whole experience. I think this experience is going to have a huge influence on really young kids. I haven't seen a lot of young kids come through, but if young kids are like, "Oh my God, this is opera? Opera is so cool!" If they get imprinted with the idea that opera=cool, then I think that's a huge doorway that's been opened, a pathway that's been paved. Generally speaking, the audience members are on the younger side. CD: What’s it like to work with the Industry versus another opera company? JA: I think in this particular scenario they just don’t have the man power to be at every single scene kind of manicuring everything. I mean in a traditional opera company, everything that's being performed is being performed with a conductor, with the music director, with the director watching, so there's more hands-on kind of thing. There's a huge amount of trust that Yuval and Marc Lowenstein and Elizabeth Cline have instilled in us and have given to us--here's this thing, here's the context of this thing, now go do this thing. I'm sure if there was a major issue or a major note, we would be told. We would be asked to do it how they wanted it. It is their project. 205 I didn't write this music. I didn't come up with the concept. This is not my project, but it is my performance. I am the performer. It’s my responsibility to breath life into as best I can. So I guess there is more flexibility just by nature of what it is, of the structure of it. CD: How did The Industry manage to extend Hopscotch another weekend? JA: Hopscotch secret alert! We were contracted through the final weekend from the beginning. Part of the payoff for me to be involved as a performer is that the piece is groundbreaking and is getting huge amounts of press, and I get to point to that and say, I was part of that. I made that. I did part of that. It’s very cool. CD: What did you think of the reviews? JA: I loved reading Alex Ross's piece. I've read Alex Ross since I was a student in music school, and loved his style of writing, so thoughtful, so well-informed, so clear. His writing is so clear, so to hear him, read him writing about a piece that I was involved with felt like such an honor, like an, "I have arrived" moment, one of many that I think all artists have in their lives. I can stick a Post-it® here. It was amazing to read his review. It was so complete. He was very excited about the project. He came through a couple times. I didn't recognize him at first. I was like, "Why does he look so familiar? Who's that guy with the pulled up socks?" Someone's like, "That's Alex Ross" (swoon). CD: What questions would you ask Alex Ross if you could? 206 JA: What would I ask Alex Ross? How do you think this fit’s in? How is this different than other experimental opera that you've seen? What does this offer that other pieces that you've seen doesn’t? What’s the new thing? The new question? CD: Would you work with The Industry again? JA: Oh yes. I feel very supported by them. I feel very supported by them emotionally and musically. CD: Even though they ask so much of you as a performer? JA: Yes, I was just talking to my partner about this. It’s amazing that they can ask so much. The reason they can ask so much of their performers is because they give so much back to them, in terms of gratitude and positivity and publicity, all these things you can't put a dollar sign on. Emotional support, the feeling of being involved in something bigger than yourself, which is something that I think that we're really all searching for on a very basic level, they're providing. I mean, how can you find a center in a city with no center? You're involved with groups like The Industry. CD: Did you have any expectations of what the experience would be like? JA: It’s nothing you expect. You don't go into this [thinking], “I know Yuval Sharon has this thing with the LA Phil, so maybe….” No. You just go in and do your job. You do the best you can, doing the task that's been set ahead of you. I just had this audition two hours ago, and not only was it members or employees of the LA Phil [who were there], but it was all of the directors of The Industry. It was Yuval Sharon and Elizabeth and Marc sitting there sending me their 207 support. I felt so supported by that. So often in the world of opera and classical singing, singers are looked at as dispensable and kind of commodities, especially female singers, especially sopranos. So to be really, to feel supported, I keep saying that word, but to feel supported, and to feel seen, and to feel paid attention to by them is a gift. CD: I’m sorry to hear that about the sopranos-as-commodities problem. What do you make of that? JA: There's just a lot of us. There are lot of sopranos out there. There are a lot of supremely talented women, and there aren't enough jobs. That's what it is. There aren't enough opportunities. A singing career is very challenging, you know. There are a lot of resources you need to be able to call to be able to move forward with the singing career. CD: Is there a sense of competition? JA: I hope that there wouldn't be. Ideally, no. Ideally, we're all on team art. Go, Team Art! We're all on the same team. There's enough for everybody to go around. Coming at it from a feeling of abundance is the only way to not drive yourself totally insane. On the darker side of it. There's always a light side and a dark side to everything and especially to art making. Yes, there is a sense of competition because only one person can get that role. Maybe you think you're better than that person, but they know X director's daughter who they babysat. Sometimes it doesn't make rational sense. You just have to keep your head down, turn and make the best art you personally can. CD: Interesting. In Lucha’s case, multiple women got that role. 208 JA: I thought that was brilliant. That Yuval got to send 19 emails that said, “You have been cast as the lead.” Everyone loves opening that email! I loved opening that email! CD: So smart. JA: Very smart. Very smart man. I think what's interesting is that I don't know what the other women are doing. I don’t know what Maria Elena [Altany’s] Lucha is doing. I'm going to be seeing her performance at the hub tomorrow, but I haven't seen any of it. I talked a little bit to Suzanna Guzman about it who's in our dressing room, so we get to have a dialogue about that. What's amazing is that I don’t get to see all the little thematic things that connect all of us. So I think that's an extra treat for the audience to be able to draw those connections when we ourselves don't even know what they are as a performer. I think that's significant somehow Hopscotch is Justine Aronson’s first production with The Industry. 209 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: The exercise of “covering” Hopscotch was more than academic or artistic. I documented not only the making of Hopscotch, but also those who created it, those that cared about it, and my own progression through the experience. As I documented, I was also marking milestones in the formation of my self as a professional journalist. In the duration of the show, I learned to write and report, to create radio pieces, video, and to code and design websites. I learned to think critically about art. I let it affect me spiritually. The final bell chime at the end of the last Finale at the Central Hub was an emotional moment. I was overwhelmed with the thought that the project that had so consumed me was ending. I imagined that the artists and the creators at The Industry were feeling similarly stirred. It was upsetting to think that this artwork which had taught me so much would no longer be living. The road I was on had ended. I comforted myself with a thought from the libretto. If, as Lucha sings in Chapter 35, “Time is happening all at once,” then Hopscotch continues to live 64 . Even if Lucha isn’t somewhere in the hills above Dodger Stadium today, in one of the billion universes that exists at simultaneously, she is there. Even if just in memory. To retrace her steps and go to the Million Dollar Theater, or Hollenbeck Park, or Libros Schmibros—anywhere that Hopscotch went, recalls the opera, bringing the music to the forefront of my mind. From now on, I will always associate the 64 Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn et al. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. 210 Bradbury Building with the Freudian Lucha. I cannot see a limo without wondering if there’s an opera inside. An alternate reality, Lucha’s reality became my own. This is how Hopscotch has impacted me. The streets of Los Angeles, my city, now have a new layer of memory superimposed upon them. Figure 46. Screen shot of About page 211 REFERENCES: Altany, Maria Elena. "A Word with Maria Elena Altany." Interview by author. November 23, 2015. Aronson, Justine. "A Word with Justine Aronson." Interview by author. November 20, 2015. Cline, Elizabeth. "Hopscotch in Review." Interview by author. January 26, 2016. Closs-Farley, Ann, and Kate Bergh. "Hopscotch Costume Designers." Interview by author. September 21, 2015. Goodman, Joel. New Year’s Eve on Wells Street in Manchester, UK, 31 December 2015. December 31, 2015. Manchester Evening News, Manchester. Accessed March 25, 2016. http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk Guzmán, Suzanna. "A Word with Suzanna Guzmán." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. Hopscotch. By Mandy Kahn, Tom Jacobson, Sarah LaBrie, Jane Stephens Rosenthal, Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and Erin Young. Boyle Heights, Arts District, Downtown, Elysian Park, Los Angeles, October 31, 2015. "Hopscotch Opera." Hopscotch. Accessed March 07, 2016. http://hopscotchopera.com/. Kamareh, Delaram. "A Word with Delaram Kamareh." Interview by author. November 19, 2015. Lowenstein, Marc. "At the Central Hub with Marc Lowenstein." Interview by author. October 31, 2015. Sharon, Yuval. Speech. September 12, 2015. Invocation at the first Rehearsal of Hopscotch, Art Share L.A., Los Angeles.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This project is both a documentary and a diary exploring how art and identity intertwine. ❧ In the fall of 2015, the mobile opera, Hopscotch, stirred the streets of Los Angeles. Hopscotch was a mass collaboration of six librettists, six composers, and over 100 artists, musicians and collaborators from all walks. Together this web of artists created a work of public art that revolutionized the way Los Angeles thinks of opera. ❧ Instead of on stage, Hopscotch played out in a fleet of cars that shuttled audiences between an array of live vignettes with performers stationed at iconic locations across the city. The nature of the site-specific performance required that Hopscotch be temporary, a six-week alternate reality superimposed on top of Los Angeles as it lives in real time and space. The show’s evanescence made it feel urgent to preserve it. To capture the sights and sounds of Hopscotch felt like an enormous responsibility, one that I took very seriously. ❧ Journalists are oft asked to remain objective, holding the subjects of their stories at arms length. However, my immersion in the documentation of Hopscotch—recording the way it sounded, looked and felt—let me understand the opera on a level that was deeply personal. My coverage of Hopscotch became a vehicle for my development as a journalist and as a person. ❧ Many who were involved with the creative process share my sense of profound connection to Hopscotch. Members of the audience, performers and producers feel changed for having experienced it. Art has permeated our consciousness, becoming part of our character. ❧ To tell the story of Hopscotch, I hoped to capture the nebulous nature of the production with a multifaceted website, pages with layers of memory depicting the chapters, the Central Hub as it was built, the stories of the artists and the creators, a digital universe where Hopscotch can live online, a space as creative as the work itself.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator DeWitt, Corinne E. (author)

Core Title The road to Hopscotch: an exploration of identity with Los Angeles' mobile opera

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism (The Arts)

Publication Date 04/21/2016

Defense Date 04/20/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art,Hopscotch,immersive art,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,opera,public art

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anawalt, Sasha (committee chair), Bustamante, Peggy (committee member), Krausas, Veronika (committee member)

Creator Email cdewitt@usc.edu,corinne.dewitt0424@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-239129

Unique identifier UC11278141

Identifier etd-DeWittCori-4337.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-239129 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DeWittCori-4337.pdf

Dmrecord 239129

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights DeWitt, Corinne E.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA