Director’s Notes:

“The second of Lucha’s nightmare visions – the others being the void that preceded it in Chapter 24 and the climactic River Styx scene that followed it in Chapter 26 – was, for many people, one of the strongest experiences in Hopscotch. The audience followed an unhinged Lucha into the spectacular Bradbury Building. They entered the elevator, where a saxophonist accompanied their journey up to the top layer. The audience proceeded level by level back down, where Lucha wanders a labyrinth of images from a noir-ish 1940s dream. Jameson appears as a silent figure, falling in love with a gorgeous ‘Lady in Red,’ standing in for both an idealized past and a potential ‘other woman.’ She ends where she started, with the final line: ‘The past has swallowed you up, and I can’t bring you back.’

“I think there are few buildings in LA as thrilling to float through as the Bradbury Building, so this chapter felt like it already couldn’t lose. The character of the architecture inspired all of the elements: Veronika wrote the piece with the traversal of the building in mind. Danielle Agami’s amazing group of dancers, Ate9, populated the levels of the building and contributed greatly to the otherworldly atmosphere.

The Bradbury Building is the oldest commercial building remaining in the central city and the decorative Victorian court makes it one of the city’s unique treasures. It’s been featured in Lethal Weapon, The White Cliffs of Dover, Chinatown, Mission Impossible, and music videos by Janet Jackson and Genesis. It is still the headquarters for some Marvel Comic teams, hence the multiple comic series that take place in the building.

“And we knew that the Lucha in this chapter would need to be an anchor for the audience – and standing so close to Delaram’s pure voice and powerful presence was certainly one of the great pleasures of this scene.

“It was important to me that Hopscotch didn’t just feel like a tour package (the Hollywood Sign was not on one of the routes). So in creating the routes and choosing the sites, I wanted to make sure iconic, quintessentially LA buildings like the Bradbury Building would alternate on the same route with anonymous or unknown sites – parking lots, forgotten public sculptures, abandoned loading docks. The fluidity with which you move from a place of overlooked beauty into a space so legendary that it’s practically a cliché is an everyday occurrence in Los Angeles and a large part of what makes living here so fascinating and unpredictable.