Santa Ana Sites spotlights immigration stories in 'Canción del Inmigrante,' a multimedia opera

By Richard Chang

May 3, 2018 4:15 PM PT

What started as a listening party in a downtown Santa Ana loft has blossomed into a popular gathering of artists, performers and art fans that changes location with every new show.

Santa Ana Sites, founded in 2013 by Allen Moon and Grand Central Art Center, is gearing up for its 20th production, “Canción del Inmigrante.” The free, multimedia “opera” takes place May 12 at 8 p.m. in the Bowers Museum outdoor courtyard.

Performing live music will be Cuñao, a Los Angeles-based Latin folk band. Also participating are Beth Peterson and One Grain of Sand Puppet Theater, as well as Crear Studio, a project founded by Grand Central artists-in-residence Sarah Rafael García and Dino Perez. About 12 Santa Ana residents who have been involved with Crear Studio over the past eight weeks will be part of the procession as well.

“Canción del Inmigrante” started as a workshop project between Cuñao and Peterson at Automata theater in L.A.’s Chinatown district.

“I thought it was really touching, really beautiful,” said Moon, a former professional dancer who now manages a roster of contemporary music, dance and theater acts for David Lieberman Artists’ Representatives. “I wanted to support the creation or further development of the work. I thought it would be great to modify it and perhaps eventually tour it. It would be nice to see it have another life.”

In its original incarnation, Peterson created shadow puppets in the Japanese bunraku style to accompany songs performed by Cuñao. With help from the Southern California-based nonprofit Community Engagement, the project expanded to include Crear Studio and Santa Ana residents who created their own puppets, masks and poems as part of the performance.

“I really feel like this is an important story,” said Peterson, who has traveled the country and the world making puppets and helping others create them, too. “The music and the lyrics are super beautiful, and the Crear poets really have a lot to say. What we really want to share are everyday people’s stories, which are not being told, shared or featured. We need to listen and learn more about our fellow neighbors.”

Julio Montero, founder of Cuñao, which is Spanish slang for brother-in-law, “dude” or “bro,” said “Canción del Inmigrante” is a set of stories about what the immigrant experience is genuinely like. One story follows a child crossing the desert with his family.

“It’s very relevant — the stories themselves,” said Montero, 40, who plays guitar and percussion and sings. “We want to just let the stories be, without having to politicize it. It’s just about trying to create an understanding of this, which is their experience. It’s not about us versus them, but being able to feel empathy for people going through this kind of experience.”

For Crear Studio, this performance is also an opportunity to showcase the community in and around downtown Santa Ana.

“The artists being marketed throughout Santa Ana are not folks who grew up here,” said García, who was raised in Santa Ana and returned there recently to write and work with Grand Central Art Center. Last year, she published six stories called “SanTana’s Fairy Tales,” which also became a multimedia installation at Grand Central.

“Rents keep spiking for families,” García said. “That’s why we started Crear, as an opportunity for us and to build equity and artists, rather than just become part of the cultural attraction.”

The works created out of Crear Studio will be on view through May 27 in Studio C of the Santora Arts Building in Santa Ana’s Artists Village. An opening reception was scheduled for May 5, and a closing reception is scheduled for 6 to 9 p.m. May 26.

John Spiak, director and chief curator of Grand Central, said Santa Ana Sites has been an opportunity for folks to venture into spaces that they may not have been aware of, or may not have had access to before. Locales have included Frida Cinema, a subterranean racquetball court and Logan Creative, which used to be a staircase factory.

“I think it’s caused people to have experiences with both outside and local performance-based artists that they wouldn’t typically have, in informal settings,” Spiak said.

Sites founder Moon said he wanted to challenge himself and “present work in a way that audiences could get closer to the work.”

“I wanted to take out the formality of going to a theater and sitting in an assigned seat,” Moon said. “One thing that art’s really good at is putting a human face on a problem, a topic or an idea, and that’s what a project like this does.”