Sweet Land (2018-2020)
The Arrivals wash up on the shore. They make contact with another civilization they call “the Hosts.” And from there, the story splinters, following diverging perspectives. Starting as a procession through the LA State Historic Park,
Sweet Land becomes an opera that erases itself.
Like all of The Industry’s previous works, Sweet Land is the result of a highly collaborative and multi-perspectival approach. Composer Du Yun is a Chinese immigrant whose recent work originates from what she states “is a lack of understanding and empathy around immigration”. Her last major opera, Angel’s Bone won a Pulitzer Prize for music and explores the psychology behind human trafficking. Composer Raven Chacon, United States Artists fellow and winner of the Creative Capital Award, is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Librettist Douglas Kearney is a poet whose “polyphonic diction pulls history apart, recombining it to reveal an alternative less whitewashed by enfranchised power” (BOMB Magazine). Librettist Aja Couchois Duncan is a mixed-race Ojibwe writer who works to advance equity and social justice. Cannupa Hanksa Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st-century Indigeneity. He co-directs Sweet Land with Yuval Sharon, the Founder and Artistic Director of The Industry and a 2017 MacArthur Fellow.
Creative Team
Director Yuval Sharon
Director & Costume Designer Cannupa Hanska Luger
Composer Raven Chacon
Composer Du Yun
Librettist Douglas Kearney
Librettist Aja Couchois Duncan
Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx (Associate Director); Jody Elff (Sound Design);
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (Lighting Designer and Production Designer);
Hana S. Kim (Projection Designer); Alex Schweder (Projection Adviser);
Tanya Orellana (Scenic Designer); Carlo Maghirang (Scenic Designer);
E.B. Brooks (Costume Designer); Tonantzin Carmelo Choreographer)
Visit the Industry’s website for a full list of cast and creative team
Reviews
“SWEET LAND made such a huge impression that it has haunted me ever since. I can’t think of anything more zeitgeisty than this immersive environmental work with enraptured scores by Du Yun and Raven Chacon, a phenomenal staging and sensation-inducing performance that allows us to look at our past, the land on which we stand, who we are and what we must mean to one another anew.”
— Mark Swed, The Los Angeles Times
“The encroaching pandemic hung over “Sweet Land,” an opera performed in a Los Angeles park, but its tales of cultural violence would have been a gut punch under any circumstances.”
— Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“A bewildering and ghostly new opera. SWEET LAND is a parable of, and fantasia on, Manifest Destiny, performed outdoors at a richly suggestive site. The ending is a miniature masterpiece.”
— Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“It’s fashionable today for writers of new operas to tackle contemporary issues, hoping to demonstrate the art form’s relevance and value. SWEET LAND takes the idea many steps further: it gives its subject a complexity and an impact that could be experienced in no other way… Neither replicable nor recordable, “Sweet Land” is not an artifact. You had to be there.”
— Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal
“An astonishing presentation that unfolds like a chillingly beautiful fever dream across several unusual settings spread out in Chinatown’s L.A. State Historic Park. SWEET LAND lingers in the memory with its utterly entrancing music.”
— Falling James, LA Weekly
Despite stellar reviews and sold-out performances in our first two weeks, Sweet Land was forced to shut down two weeks ahead of schedule to stop the spread of COVID-19. With cameras as the only audience, the ensemble of Sweet Land came together for one final impassioned performance to preserve a new work the Los Angeles Times called “opera as astonishment.” A modest on-demand fee will help The Industry survive this emergency, by making up lost box office income and allowing us to fully pay the artists and crew. Both “Feast” and “Train” are both available.
