The Broad Stage Announces 2020/21 Season

The Broad Stage has announced its 2020/21 season. The announcement comes at a delicate time as the arts are reeling from the pandemic. The Broad Stage responds to these conditions with a condensed season running from mid-January through July 2021, with the hopeful exception of one outdoor, physically distanced event in the Fall and a robust selection of new digital offerings beginning in July 2020.

Santa Monica College announced in early May that it would continue distance-learning through the fall, and therefore the campus remains closed including the theaters primarily used by The Broad Stage, located at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center: The Eli & Edythe Broad Stage's main stage, The Edye Second Space and The East Wing.

While the in-theater season begins in January, The Broad Stage is planning to present a robust set of programs online starting in July through its streaming portal The Broad Stage At Home, to introduce the 2020/21 season artists and upcoming commissions for 2021/22 and beyond. More details on these programs will be announced in June.

Series Subscriptions and Create-Your-Own packages are available at thebroadstage.org. Members receive priority until June 3.

WORLD PREMIERE: BIRDS IN THE MOON

The official launch of The Broad Stage's 2020/21 season will occur this Fall, with the World Premiere of Birds in the Moon, a mobile, theatrical chamber opera by Mark Grey and Júlia Canosa i Serra, and directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. The opera, in collaboration with Meyer Sound, is transported in a shipping container which transforms into a state-of-the-art, self-powered stage, will be performed outdoors in a variety of to-be-determined locations around Santa Monica. Physical distancing protocols will be in place with multiple performances so that as many people as possible can enjoy. With live music, soundscapes, video projections and actors, Birds in the Moon is about the search for a better world. Now, even more timely than when originally conceived, the work considers the choices made by necessity in an environment where water is scarce, and migration is a desperate flight in search of a better life.

Grey and Canosa i Serra are best known for their National Opera of Belgium production of Frankenstein. Pulitzer directed David Lang's prisoner of the state for the New York Philharmonic and the Barbican Theatre, Leonard Bernstein's Mass for the LA Phil and at Lincoln Center, Nixon in China for the LA Phil, John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary for San Francisco Symphony and Lucia di Lammermoor for LA Opera. The creative team is further enhanced with video design by Deborah O'Grady and production design by Chad Owens.

HEARTBEAT OPERA, Yo-Yo Ma & AUSTIN MANN, ORIGINAL THEATER PIECES, Alan Cumming & NPR'S ARI SHAPIRO

In New York-based Heartbeat Opera's Fidelio (Los Angeles Premiere February 13-14), real prisoners sing the parts of prisoners - an imaginative staging with live performers and 100 singers on video from incarcerated choirs across America. Fidelio is directed by Ethan Heard, Founding Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera; the music director is Daniel Schlosberg.

Yo-Yo Ma and Austin Mann (Los Angeles Premiere April 29) explore the role culture plays in helping to imagine and build a stronger, more resilient society, in their multimedia presentation Truth, Trust and Service - How Culture Connects Us. This special collaboration continued an experiment that Yo-Yo began with the Bach Project, a two year journey on six continents for which performances of Bach's suites for solo cello were paired with "Days of Action" asking how culture seeks truth, builds trust and encourages all of us to work in service of one another.

In April 2021, three original theater-makers perform their acclaimed productions at The Edye, all seen for the first time in Los Angeles. The Bay Area's gender bender Monique Jenkinson, the first cis-gender woman to win a major drag queen pageant, presents feminism as a powerful, vulnerable and subversive act through her drag queen alter ego Fauxnique in The F Word (April 2-3).

In Nassim (April 16-18) playwright Nassim Soleimanpour from Tehran appears on stage in an audacious theatrical experiment when a different performer joins him each night, while the script waits unseen in a sealed box. The New York Times said, "His new play speaks, at times eloquently, of trying to live and work in a place and with a language not your own."

In Sea Sick (April 23-24), prize winning journalist Alanna Mitchell from Toronto tells the dark truth about our oceans. Exeunt Magazine said, "The story can be hard to hear, but Sea Sick convincingly argues that to hear this story completely is to forgive ourselves, and to understand our agency, our role, and ourselves as actors."

In a different musical program on the main stage, two musicians embody this spirit: Galician bagpiper and Silkroad's Cristina Pato and Juilliard-trained violinist Mazz Swift. Their program INVISIBLE(s) (Los Angeles Premiere March 20) sheds light on forgotten communities, Pato addresses women's issues and Swift's piece is about victims of police brutality and racism.

The season closes with a late-in-the-season and rare cabaret of tunes and tall tales from Tony Award winning actor Alan Cumming and NPR's All Things Considered host and frequent Pink Martini singer Ari Shapiro in Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret (Los Angeles Premiere July 30-31 presented with Southern California Public Radio).

Mark Morris, EPHRAT ASHERIE, ACROBUFFOS, MARIE CHOUINARD, THE 7 FINGERS

Among the companies and artists becoming part of The Broad Stage's community for the first time this season are four movement trailblazers: Mark Morris Dance Group & Music Ensemble (June 10-13) performing Mozart Dances (The New York Times said, "Most artfully musical choreographer alive"); Ephrat Asherie Dance Company performing Odeon (March 5-6) (Berkshire Times said, "Just when you thought you knew something about dance, along comes Asherie to blow that all to smithereens."); and Acrobuffos performing Air Play (Los Angeles Premiere January 23) - a stage-filling, unique wordless visual poem that brings to life the very air that we breathe, complete with stunning images and gales of laughter. Part sculpture, circus and theatre, Air Play transforms ordinary objects into uncommon beauty.

Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Los Angeles Premiere April 16-17) presents Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights from internationally-renowned and eye-openingly original choreographer Marie Chouinard. The performance is a living canvas of one of the world's most famous paintings: a surreal dance vision that squarely confronts the before, during and after of original sin with visual wit, wonderment and chaos. Tanzchrift (Vienna) said, "Chouinard successfully pulls off the feat of actually bringing the Bosch triptych to life ... magnificent, delightful, startlingly well performed ... a new vision of Bosch."

The 7 Fingers, a Broad Stage favorite, brings Passengers (Los Angeles Premiere February 19-21), a scintillating mix of evocative dance, physical expression, thrilling acrobatics and mesmerizing projections. Passengers reflects on our nostalgic fascination with trains, transporting audiences to dreams of another era and land, while celebrating the beauty of interpersonal relationships.

THE 2021 SEASON ALSO INCLUDES:

Duets with three legends: the pre-eminent jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves, Chucho Valdés - the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz and saxophonist Joe Lovano, winner of DownBeat Magazine's Critics and Readers Polls countless times as Tenor Saxophonist, Musician of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year and Triple Crowns. (Broad Stage Debuts, February 4-5)

A signature performance from Simone Dinnerstein, considered one of the foremost interpreters of Bach of her generation, of the Goldberg Variations (Broad Stage Debut February 6).

The Stanley Clarke Band (January 16) makes The Broad Stage their area home. Clarke, one of the most celebrated bass players in the world, attained "living legend" status during his 40-plus year career -- the first bassist in history to double on acoustic and electric bass with equal ferocity.

Takács Quartet (Broad Stage Debut January 15) in a program of Haydn, Britten and Debussy. "Arguably the greatest string quartet in the world," said The Guardian. Former Broad Stage resident artist Richard Yongjae O'Neill recently joined the group.

Recital from Elīna Garanča (May 9) who made her United States recital debut at The Broad Stage in 2012. Opera News said, "Elīna Garanča has already secured her place in opera history, and she may just be getting started."

Keb' Mo' (March 26) The five-time GRAMMY winner has a reputation as a modern master of American roots music, performing an evening of old-fashioned blues mixed seamlessly with contemporary soul and folksy storytelling.

Miloš (March 12-13), the young virtuoso who revitalized the role of the guitar in classical music, has a repertoire spanning Bach to The Beatles.

THE RETURN OF BELOVED FAVORITE SERIES: NAT GEO LIVE, BLACKBOX, BEETHOVEN, BAGELS & BANTER, RED HEN PRESS

Nat Geo Live celebrates its 10th year at The Broad Stage. In Improbable Ascent (March 18-19), Maureen Beck relates her inspiring story as a one-handed rock climber. In Invisible Wonders (April 1-2) photographer Anand Varma uses a camera not just a tool to capture what he sees, but as a way to illuminate layers of beauty and complexity that are otherwise hidden from the naked eye. In How to Clone a Mammoth (May 20-21), Beth Shapiro asks the question could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life?

Beethoven, Bagels & Banter (Sundays, 11:00am Jan 31, Feb 28, Apr 11; The Edye)
The popular series returns with a season-long celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday. Curated by Robert Davidovici and featuring a mélange of world-class guest musicians, each program will include at least one work by the great composer himself. "Robert Davidovici is a terrific violinist. His technique is of the 'wow' variety, his tone as huge as he cares to make it." said The Boston Globe. Spend your Sunday mornings with great music, lively conversation and freshly made bagels.

This season blackbox - now in both The Edye and the East Wing Music Hall, which allows space for dancing -- is curated by The Reverend Shawn Amos, who will perform with his new band The Brotherhood (June 25), as well as evenings with vocalist Missy Anderson (February 16), bassist Jennifer Leitham (March 19) and guitarist King Solomon Hicks (April 9).

Red Hen Press, which partnered on The Broad Stage at Home during the pandemic hiatus, has three programs, the first exploring African American Poetry and the Blues (February 13) featuring Dexter L. Booth, Douglas Manuel and Eleanor Wilner, with music by Keith Flynn and The Holy Men. The second Those Who Loved Medusa (March 13) features the gorgeous operatic compositions of Mark Abel, sung by GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Hila Plitmann, and poet Felicia Zamora; the third program, Poetry of Resistance (May 8) presents work by writers of color, women and LGBT writers Allison Joseph, Khalisa Rae, David Campos, Kazim Ali and Blas Falconer, and the "jungle jazz" mixture of African, Latin and Caribbean grooves and American Jazz from percussionist Munyungo Jackson.