Here's what downtown Menlo Park should do with all those gaping spaces on El Camino Real that used to hold car dealerships. Opera.An enterprising company called Overtone Industries is putting on contemporary opera in a vacant Nissan auto-dealership warehouse in Southern California this month. That's what I'm talkin' about.
The piece, called "Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands," is three hours long, about two characters trying to make sense of their identities and life experiences with the help of a government agency. Sounds like a Menlo Park City Council meeting, only shorter.
The coolest bit, which might or might not play in M.P., is that the opera incorporates 21 sets spread out over 25,000 square feet of space. According to the L.A. Times: "There's the unusual element of the audience members traveling from scene to scene and set to set in a train of carts pulled by an electric golf cart. Those with the lower-priced tickets follow the trains on foot while dragging along their folding chairs."
You can read the full Times story here.
Meanwhile, I'm reminded of another plan to bring the arts to a vacant space in Menlo Park a few years back. The itinerant artists of Red Ink Studios hatched a plan to move into the bereft Park Theatre, which closed in 2002 after owner Howard Crittenden booted Landmark Theatres. But it turned out the building needed extensive renovations that the artists couldn't afford.
Shame. Seen any good films (or anything, for that matter) lately at the Park?
Pictured: Jason Adams as Tom in Overtone Industries' "Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands." Photo by Christina House, for the Los Angeles Times.
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