Meet The Voices of Sweet Land

We are in the final stages of fundraising for Sweet Land and we need your help!

Sweet Land, composed by Raven Chacon and Du Yun with text by Aja Couchois Duncan and Douglas Kearney, is conceived as an opera that erases itself: as the audience processes through the LA State Historic Park, the space behind you disappears, in a musical and visual experience revealing the mechanism of historic erasure. The audience is split on diverging tracks through a park to experience contrasting stories of America and its founding. 

WHO

This unique partnership of powerful talents is part of what makes Sweet Land so extraordinary and important. You’ve already met our incredible Creative Team (Raven Chacon, Du Yun, Aja Couchois Duncan, Douglas Kearney, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Yuval Sharon), and now we’d like to introduce you to our stellar cast. 

These 36 people are the face of the production and bring the creative and design team’s visions to life. Over the next few weeks, we will share our cast’s stories here and on social media. 

WHY

Sweet Land aims to re-frame American history and confront the erasures enacted to establish our National identity. None of us could claim to offer a solution to the problems we are addressing, but this method of collaboration — collective action and an empathetic exchange of experience — is the only “solution” we can offer to issues surrounding inequality and injustice. 

WHAT

Our goal to raise $30,000 by December 31, 2019. 

The donations we receive in this campaign will be part of the budget that goes directly to these singers. Our $30,000 goal is roughly 3% of the overall $890,000 Sweet Land budget (and only a third of what we are committed to paying our singers), but the amount represents an impactful sum in our final stages of preparing this production.

HOW

We want this project to be as inclusive as possible: where it takes place, who is involved, who is it for, and who makes it possible. Having a diverse set of contributors will enable us to reach our bold vision for the project. Contributors help us tell our story. For this story, together, we envision a world in which our narratives reflect the diversity of the place we live in. 

When you make a contribution to this special “Voice of Sweet Land” Campaign you will receive:

• $20 Social media “sing-outs” from our cast

• $100 The Industry totebag

• $1,000 to get early access to tickets — a week ahead of the general public 

• $5,000 to receive 2 complimentary tickets.

If you’d like to make other arrangements email executive director Elizabeth Cline at elizabeth@theindustryla.org

For so many reasons, social and artistic, we all feel an urgent need to create this opera now with this cast. Won’t you help us make that happen by contributing to the “Voices of Sweet Land”?