Up to 20 tons of sand will be poured into an L.A. museum for fall’s biggest spectacle

If autumn 2021 is anything like last year, hordes of Angelenos will flock to the beach in mid-October, seeking refuge from a heat wave. Some will trek north, to Malibu’s high bluffs and boulder-lined shores; others south, to the picturesque La Jolla seaside.

And some people will head downtown, to the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary.

“Sun & Sea,” the climate-crisis opera that earned the top prize at the 2019 Venice Biennale, will make its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Contemporary on Oct. 14. The L.A. production — part contemporary opera, part crowdsourced performance art, part diorama come to life — is a joint presentation of MOCA, the Hammer Museum and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Directors of all three organizations — Klaus Biesenbach, Ann Philbin and Kristy Edmunds, respectively — joined forces to bring the work here as part of a U.S. tour.

The piece — directed by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, written by Vaiva Grainytė and scored by Lina Lapelytė, all Lithuanian women — addresses climate change in what could best be described as an operatic lament about the disintegration of our planet. Audience members will watch the performance from a U-shaped balcony, looking down onto a beach bathed in high noon sunlight — the Geffen Contemporary, transformed with 10 to 20 tons of locally sourced sand. Thirteen singers and eight non-singing performers, all part of the Lithuanian company Neon Realism, will relax on towels, slather on sunscreen, play badminton, nibble on snacks and build sandcastles as they perform the libretto, translated from Lithuanian into English. A live dog and several children fill out the crowd, and there’s plenty of ambient beach noise — chatter and laughter, the crinkling of food wrappers, a popping volleyball — layered over the recorded musical soundscape and live singing.

— Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 23, 2021