The Industry and REDCAT to Showcase Innovative LAB 2026 This February

The Industry celebrates the return of its LAB series, in partnership with Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), featuring new works in opera by renowned artists Guillermo E. Brown, Carmina Escobar, and Matana Roberts.

The Industry has long created interdisciplinary projects throughout Los Angeles, using opera as a lens through which to re-imagine relationships between music, the visual arts, and theater. The organization regularly sets productions within the actual landscape, bringing art into life, and creating new, more intimate relationships between artworks and their audiences.

The Industry LAB series is at the very core of these experiments, inviting artists—who have never worked explicitly in opera—to speculate boldly on these possibilities. In this way, the LAB provides a catalyst for The Industry's mission to expand opera's definition, genres, and form, always asking who it's made by, and for whom. The Industry's longstanding mission: We make opera for everyone.

When The Industry's first LAB took place in 2022, the program blurred the boundaries of visual art and opera in concept. At REDCAT, Brown, Escobar, and Roberts—three artists widely recognized for their boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary work—move literally between gallery and theater spaces at REDCAT.

The LAB program will take place over the course of two weeks. On February 20–22, the theater features performances by Escobar as she stages her opera as the moment when an idea takes physical form in a shaped voice; and Brown as he collaborates with percussionist and operatic singers to underscore the manipulation of time, place, and space as the fundamental elements of dramaturgy.

In the gallery, February 18–March 1, Robert realizes her opera as an art installation, where both artists and audiences take the stage; she will perform in this environment, and has invited luminaries from across musical genres to activate the space.

The Industry's continuing LAB series aspires to develop future opportunities for opera, and aims for opera's inherent interdisciplinarity to open new possibilities for the arts.

Individual performance tickets for general audiences are $25 (with discounts for REDCAT members and Cal Arts students); a pass for the entire program is $35.