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ANIMATED CHAPTERS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 23 16 13 10 5 3 1 27 30 34
Introduction
Crash
An intersection in Boyle Heights
Lucha's Childhood
Lucha's Quinceañera Song
Mariachi Plaza, Boyle Heights
Jameson's Story
Jameson Portrait
The 2nd Street Tunnel, Downtown Los Angeles
The Reunion
A Rehearsal Studio in the Arts District
First Kiss
Hollenbeck Park, East Los Angeles
Angel's Point
Angel's Point, Elysian Park
Love and Fractals
The Floating Nebula
The Corn Fields, Los Angeles State Historic Park, Chinatown
Wedding
City Hall, Downtown Los Angeles
The Next Years
The Phone Call, Part 1
Traversing between the Arts District and Boyle Heights
A Fortune
Chinatown Plaza
Orlando's Story
Orlando's Fairwell
Evergreen Cemetery
Interlude (Car Wash)
AirStream Trailer, Elysian Park
Passengers
The Roadways, Elysian Park
The Experiment
3rd Street and Broadway
Despair
230 Center St, Arts District
The Disappearance
The Red Notebook
Utter darkness
The Other Woman
The Bradbury Building, Downtown Los Angeles
Hades
Bowtie Parcel, Los Angeles River
Breakthrough
Lucha and Orlando in Love
Historic Core, Downtown Los Angeles
Lucha Portrait
Alongside the LA River, Interstate 5
Orlando In Love
Orfeo
The Million Dollar Theater
Orlando Portrait
Libros Schmibros Book Store, Boyle Heights
Farewell From the Roof Tops
Rooftops, Toy Factory Lofts, Biscuit Lofts, Ito Building Tower, Arts District
Old Age Like a Dream
The Phone Call, Part 2
Chavez Ravine, Elysian Park
Finale
The Central Hub

Farewell From the Roof Tops

Location: Rooftops, Toy Factory Lofts, Biscuit Lofts, Ito Building Tower, Arts District
Trumpet: Jonah Levy
Lucha: Marja Liisa Kay
Horns: Matthew Otto and Tawney Lynn
Viola: Melinda Rice
Violin: Orin Hildestad
Trombone: Tony Rinaldi/Matt Barbier
Music by Ellen Reid
Text by Mandy Kahn
Desperate to be free from the past, Lucha returns to the site of her first date with Jameson: the rooftop that overlooks all of Los Angeles. She has made peace with the fact that she will never know the truth of Jameson’s disappearance, but she must now face the difficulty of giving up her illusions. One by one, she forces herself to say goodbye to the different dreams of life with Jameson. Although a punishing trial, she comes down from the roof triumphant and with an almost supernatural perspective of peace.

Director’s Notes:

“Chapter 33 was one of the big climaxes of the whole piece: Lucha has to say goodbye to the illusions of ever knowing what happened to Jameson. She finds herself on a rooftop and sees and hears a trumpet player on a faraway rooftop, dressed as Jameson, and sings a distant duet with him. She turns a corner, and a trombone on another rooftop, also dressed as Jameson, gives her a second chance to say goodbye. At the end of this scene, she gets back into the elevator and claims a feeling of serenity so strong as to be almost supernatural: ‘I feel my powers now. The city is orchestral: I lift its baton.’

“I feel my powers now
cars move toward me-
clouds thrill me.
I feel my powers now
the city falls in step with me.
I feel my powers now-
this city is orchestral.
I lift its baton.”

“Ellen and I worked on the dramatic arc of this scene perhaps more than any other. During the preview performances the scene ran as originally written: Lucha went in a tortured state to the top of the building to ritualistically cast off the memories of Jameson, and then emerged at the other end as a transformed and tranquil soul. Somehow that arc was too much to try and encapsulate in the relatively brief 10 minutes of the scene. Moving around the roof also made it difficult to truly follow the minor gradations in her journey towards peace – for those that were so transfixed by the sight and sound of the instrumentalists on the rooftops, they missed the character’s turning point, and the ride back down to street level was just confusing. Finally, the first version of the score was routinely 15 minutes long, and each chapter had to be precisely 10 minutes – including elevators up and down! – if it wasn’t going to throw the whole route into havoc.

“After we got the Red Route on its feet for its preview, we all went to work on staging the Yellow and Green Routes, which gave us a lot of perspective on what worked and what didn’t in time to make corrections. Once the entirety of Hopscotch was on its feet, it seemed clear that the chapters that communicated the most effectively were ones of isolated moments and atmospheres – less large-scale dramatic arcs and more essential states. Ellen and I agreed to have this piece framed by a sense of Lucha’s peace – her music on the way up to the roof and down from the roof expressed a similar acceptance, with the interlude on the roof as the last and perhaps most difficult disturbance. I loved the sense that enlightenment is a gradual process: even when the light-bulb turns on, there are relapses that still have to be overcome. To keep the chapter at a predictable 10-minute running time, Ellen made some internal cuts that kept the story and character clear. By the time we opened, the scene was as focused, direct, and strong as the other chapters.