LA-based opera company “The Industry” has created an experimental opera that takes place in 24 cars around the city. Starz CEO Chris Albrecht wants his channel to reach a diverse audience. LA taco place partners with bands.
Hopscotch: Riding through LA in The Industry's mobile opera for 24 cars
When you think of opera what pops into your head? An ornate concert hall with a well-dressed, largely older crowd, perhaps?
Well, in a new production, The LA-based experimental opera company The Industry is taking opera out of the stuffy concert hall and onto the gritty streets of Los Angeles.
Called Hopscotch, this new opera will take place inside 24 cars. Ticketholders will be whisked from scene to scene in different cars — mostly limos — to different locations throughout Los Angeles, while various singers, musicians and actors perform both inside and outside the cars.
If you’re having a hard time wrapping your head around this concept, don’t worry. The Frame’s Michelle Lanz will clear it all up with this report.
A day or so before I attend a preview of the Hopscotch Opera, I get an email with GPS coordinates of where I’m supposed to be at exactly 2:30PM. The coordinates are important, because where I’m going doesn’t even have an address.
I follow my trusty Google Maps, and I end up on top of a hill in Elysian Park overlooking Dodger Stadium and downtown L.A. There’s a Hopscotch flag and an airstream trailer marking my destination. But this is hardly the place you’d expect to find one of the most ambitious operas ever produced in Los Angeles.
Yuval Sharon, Artistic Director of The Industry opera company, and the mastermind behind Hopscotch, describes:
Every single car ride is kind of a different opera. It’s 24 10-minute operas basically.
That was part of the initial concept, that every time you switched cars you felt like you were going into a different universe. A different sound world, different artists, obviously because they can’t be in more than one car at a time. Some of them have pre-recorded music with a live singer in it, some of them have 13 musicians involved. You will never know what to expect when you get into the next car.
Here’s how it works: One ticket gets you on one of three performance routes, labeled Red, Yellow or Green. Within each route are 8 chapters — or scenes — of the Hopscotch story, told out of chronological order. You start off in a limo with an opera singer or a musician. Then you’re driven through the city to the next location.
If you're curious, you can read a full summary of the plot and characters via the Hopscotch website. You'll also find a series of animations summarizing the chapters.
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Production Manager Ash Nichols is in charge of overseeing all elements of the show. She says:
It’s an opera, but it’s also very much like a new play; it’s also very much like a film shoot with 24 locations. It’s got a foot in every world, we’ve got dancers, we’ve got an aerialist, we’ve got actors and opera singers.
And this isn’t just a leisurely car ride. You’ll exit the car and walk to a scene along the LA River or near train tracks in Chinatown. Next, you’ll get into a limo that will race you through Boyle Heights to a scene in a parking lot. Inside the car with you are 3 or 4 other audience members, like Philip King, a harpist.
“I’m the harpist in the limo that the audience is riding with while they are watching the scene in front of them, and that scene is being mic’d into the limo. They will have a once in a lifetime experience with me. You don’t get beatboxing harpists. Too much.”
It might seem crazy, but the chronology of the story doesn’t matter with Hopscotch. The point is that each participant is thrown into a scene and a location unexpectedly.
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Yuval Sharon explains:
We want the audience to be surprised. In many ways the core idea of this project is a sense of disorientation, quite literally. So if you get into a car and not knowing the destination, how does that change the way that you view the city?
Hopscotch isn’t the first Industry production that challenged the way we view both opera and the city of L.A. In 2013, the company staged Christopher Cerrone’s opera, Invisible Cities, inside LA’s Union Station.
For that performance, ticket-holders wandered freely throughout the fully operational train station while actors performed their scenes in different areas throughout the station. The music and vocal tracks were mixed live and fed into wireless Sennheiser headphones (Sennheiser is also providing microphones and other technology to make Hopscotch work).
It was actually in the months leading up to the premiere of Invisible Cities when Sharon and his collaborator Jason Thompson had the initial idea for Hopscotch.
Invisible Cities at that point was so hard and seemed like a pipe dream . . . and we started thinking, what’s going to be harder? We thought, 'What about an opera in cars, in which the audience has an incredibly intimate experience with a singer and they keep switching cars over and over again?' I thought, 'Whoa. That would be so hard.' Unfortunately, the idea seemed so exciting that I couldn’t let go of it.
Two years after that initial spark, Hopscotch is now a fully formed — and quite complex — production. A total of six composers and six writers collaborated on the story.
The final result spans 36 chapters, or scenes, and follows several years in the lives of the three main characters: Lucha, Jameson and Orlando.
Ninety-four crew members and 128 performers will bring the story to life each day of the opera’s three-week run. By the time it’s all over, the cast members will have performed their parts 192 times.
A so-called Central Hub in the parking lot of the Southern California Institute of Architecture acts as opera headquarters as well as the finale of the show. It's also free and open to the public to attend, and large TV screens will be showing video streaming in from the various cars and locations. Sennheiser headphones will be available for people to listen in on the action.
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Taking the opera out of the opera house and into the streets — and in cars — comes with its own challenges for the six composers. Some had to tweak and rethink their works once rehearsals moved into the streets.
Composer Marc Lowenstein describes, the challenge was "mostly acoustics."
You’d think a car is a dead acoustic space, but a limousine has just enough space that the singers can really sing and sing lightly and it's wonderful . . . You really have to be willing to write what you love and then be prepared to let go and constantly reshape. For me personally it took a lot of work to figure out what would work compositionally.
And then there’s the fact that the scenes take place on busy streets and in public places —something production manager Ash Nichols has to coordinate:
We’re not going through quiet residential neighborhoods that don’t have much traffic. We’re in very iconic L.A. places that are busy and full of people and that’s what makes it exciting. And that’s what makes it amazing — that we have these stories that are designed around these places. But it’s also a big risk.
After previewing the show myself I can tell you that it definitely isn’t a hot mess. But does Hopscotch succeed in making audiences experience both opera and Los Angeles in a different way?
Audience member Tammy Silver seems to think so:
It was so peaceful and interesting and it made me look at the city, passing by in our little capsule of a car hearing opera music and maybe a flute or a violin and realizing no one else know what’s going on in this car. And that’s kind of how life is here in L.A.
For ticket info check out the Hopscotch website. You can experience the opera for free at the central hub located at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in downtown L.A.
Starz CEO Chris Albrecht: Premium cable is too focused on 'affluent white males'
The Frame's series of corner office conversations with TV network chiefs has addressed issues of gender and racial diversity, as well as asking the question "Is there too much TV these days" with Showtime President David Nevins and the CEO of FX Networks and FX Productions, John Landgraf. In this installment, the Frame's John Horn visits the office of Chris Albrecht, CEO of Starz, whose current shows include "Power," "Outlander" and the upcoming "Ash vs. Evil Dead."
Albrecht was formerly the chairman and CEO of HBO and has a long history in original television programming. Among the topics covered in the conversation: How he woos creators like Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, what he thinks of a possible merger with Lionsgate and how riding the subways of NYC as a kid made him want to create content by and for a diverse audience.
Interview Highlights
How do you describe the Starz brand?
I would describe the Starz brand as premium [and] differentiated from the other things on television. We are focused on serving underserved audiences in the premium space.
Underserved meaning...?
Having been in the premium space for three decades, it's often focused on affluent white males.
You're one of the few channels that has looked out and said, there's a tremendous audience that needs shows. Black audiences, women audiences and Latino audiences. So what do you think the industry doesn't see in terms of how they can better serve a diverse TV audience?
All you have to do is look at the face of America and realize that the executive suites in Hollywood don't necessarily reflect that diversity. ... I've had a chance to work with a lot of talented people at HBO on the comedy side. Working with so many terrific artists of so many different ethnicities, you quickly learn that no one has a stranglehold on what's good.
You cast a wide net.
Hey, I'm a New York City boy who traveled back and forth to school on the subways. If you wanna see what America looks like, get on the E or the F train.
Does your program philosophy at Starz differ from the philosophy you had at HBO?
Yes. It is different. At HBO in the late '90s and early 2000s, we were trying to use the Emmys as a third-party validation for our brand. As television has proliferated, the Emmy Awards are one measure of some very subjective qualifications that a relatively small group of people bestow on television shows, that to me have more to do with the software of buzz, rather than the hardware of the ideas and execution behind the shows.
We're not chasing Emmy Awards [at Starz] because I don't think we're going to win that game. We're chasing loyalty from subscribers. We're chasing new opportunities to have people who previously didn't think that premium was for them.
What do you think are the biggest obstacles not just to Starz but to television overall?
The thing I worry about is when it becomes about winning and not about growing the medium. There's the business part of this ... and certainly that's a big part. It's not necessary for a business to be cutthroat for people to thrive and survive. As I see a lot of the big mergers happening, and companies getting larger on the distribution side ... I think it is worrisome. There can be a win-win in these conversions for both companies and for the viewer.
So where does that put you in the conversations about Starz merging with a company like Lionsgate?
I do think that there are many advantages to potential alliances between companies. Those alliances can be anything, like making a television show, to a joint venture on a new business, to merging the companies and creating one new entity.
Does the idea of a Lionsgate deal make sense to you?
Look, I think there are potential benefits to it. Obviously putting two large companies together — we're both multi-billion dollar companies — is challenging. We've had conversations about ways we could work together, but there's certainly nothing to announce at this time.
Is there a show that you let get away? One you didn't pull the trigger on, that went on to have success with one of your competitors?
We tried hard to get "The Strain." I had worked with [Guillermo del Toro] when I was at HBO on "Pan's Labyrinth." And I was really excited to get back in business with him. FX won that toss. But that was one. Especially now that we have "Ash [vs. Evil Dead]." That would have been a killer, one-two punch. No pun intended.
HomeState lets indie-rockers make their own breakfast tacos
The Austin indie-band Spoon are known for their groovy beats, catchy lyrics and, apparently, culinary inspirations.
Los Angeles diners will soon be able to judge the band’s kitchen skills when a hip new Los Feliz restaurant introduces its first band-designed breakfast taco.
The “Band Taco Program” is a partnership between L.A. musicians and HomeState, the Silver Lake Tex-mex breakfast joint. Every month, HomeState will feature a new taco dreamed up by a different musician, with part of the proceeds going toward the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The non-profit helps young aspiring musicians get professional lessons at a low cost.
The Frame's John Horn talks with Briana Valdez, the owner of HomeState, about the Band Taco program.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
What gave you the idea to start the Band Taco program?
Well, it was kind of a fun idea that my sister and I cooked up and one thing we noticed -- and I guess it's no surprise -- is that a lot our regular guests are musicians. It's accessible, you can have breakfast late and a lot of musicians can sleep in, roll over...
Cause they're waking up at one in the afternoon, right?
[Laughs] Yeah. So we have a forgiving breakfast schedule. So yeah, it's one that we're talking about, you know, "How can we really reach out to these people and also reach out to our community at large? We saw it as an opportunity to do something really unique. Because HomeState is one-of-a-kind, serving what we serve, kind of the fashion that we serve it in.
So we thought, "Well, let's connect with some of the guests that come in all the time that are in bands and let them create their own taco. Let's feature it and then let's work with somebody in the community to share some of the proceeds of those sales." So the natural pairing was Silverlake Conservatory, who was in the neighborhood before but has now moved even closer on the same block.
The Silverlake Conservatory of Music is a local arts conservatory, but you're also looking for benefits for need-based scholarships. What do you hope the ultimate reward is from the money you're giving to Silverlake and how much money do you actually hope to raise?
Well, I think because this is a new program, we don't know how much money we'll raise. Obviously, we really hope to build a great foundation to support kids that may not have access to music and I think that's what Silverlake Conservatory's mission is as well.
Personally, I grew up and my family didn't have much money, but we found a way to get instruments and time devoted to music. It was a really important thing for me personally so that's what I'd like to see happen with this program is to help with outreach and pair with Silverlake Conservatory's existing mission and really just support what they're doing.
HomeState starts its Band Taco program on Sunday, November 1 with Spoon's John Britt Daniel's creation, "The Ranchero."