PROGRAM NOTE
The Clearing and the Forest is an evening-length, fully-staged work for chamber ensemble that explores the relationship between landscape, migration, and refuge. Each member of the chamber ensemble is also a silent actor in a theatrical work depicting the movement of human beings through the natural environment in search of safety, togetherness, and home.
The world premiere production was directed by Scott Ordway and featured costume and scenic design by Erica Eliot. The production, which was created for the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX, used large-scale installation pieces made of foraged flowers, trees, and fruit to depict migration across climactic zones. The forest is the element which unites these disparate landscapes, always present, but always different: boreal forest, temperate forest, tropical forest.
The story is told abstractly through a series of images. In the first act, we meet a group of people whose frozen home has become an unsuitable place for them to remain. In the second act, they leave this place and wander, both individually and in pairs, in search of another. In the third act, they are together again and perhaps better for having made the journey, but share a memory of the home they have lost. When the work begins, the floor of the performance space—which surrounds and includes the audience—is littered with pine boughs. By the end, the branches have been gradually replaced by hundreds of scattered oranges. Both evergreen and citrus fruit fill the performance space with their subtle fragrance, creating a multi-sensory dramatic experience of movement, searching, and loss.
