PE RFOR MI N G AR TS
to the moon and beyond Plans at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica include a chamber opera, a digital illusionist, 11 local premieres and 17 artists new to the venue.
WITH BIRDS IN the moon, illusion in a digital space and pride in advancing artistic endeavors, creativity carries on at the Broad Stage amid theater’s shifting landscape. A key reason: The Broad Stage was well on a path toward change before the pandemic hit, according to Rob Bailis, its artistic and executive director. In fact, that’s what initially drew him to join the performing arts center on the Santa Monica College campus in June 2019.
24 PERFORMANCES FALL 2020
“The Broad Stage already had a lot of overtones of social justice and of deep community engagement while remaining firmly an artistic institution,” Bailis says. That sense of purpose guides both the theater’s revised 2020-21 season and its new urgency for planning 2022 and 2023. Stay-at-home orders upended programming that Bailis says has been intended to celebrate the center’s renewed mission to strengthen its creative partnerships and engage diverse audiences.
“It was a really intense pivot to go from what I thought would be sort of this calling-card season to having to just immediately address the circumstances we were in,” he says. Good fortune played a hand in two of the Broad Stage offerings. Birds in the Moon and illusionist Scott Silven managed to remain on the calendar with COVID-era tweaking. Birds in the Moon is the world premiere of a chamber opera designed for outdoor spaces.
Performed on a mobile stage, the innovative opera will be presented free in several spots around Santa Monica. The tweaks: There will be more dates than originally planned; there will be smaller audiences, safely spaced apart. The opera offers social engagement as well as social distancing. Written by Mark Grey and Júlia Canosa i Serra, Birds in the Moon is a tale of migration, a challenging environment and the search for a better life. “The story in this some-
