THEATRE REVIEW

JUNE 2026 | Volume 264

 

Back in the early 2000s, Boca del Lupo’s Jay Dodge and Sherry J Yoon staged some memorable outdoor extravaganzas: The Last Stand and Vasily the Luckless high in the trees of Stanley Park; Quasimodo under the Burrard Street bridge. Now they’re back with a show aimed at kids and parents. It’s not quite as spectacular as their previous efforts but still pretty awesome.

Boca del Lupo has teamed with Korea’s ArtstageSAN (Ru Ji Yun and Jo Hyun San) for Me & The Forest, a 45-minute show in which tree spirits talk to the audience directly through individual headsets we each wear. With a script by Yvette Nolan, music by Pietro Amato, evocative sound effects by Carey Dodge and terrific voicework by Hiro Kanagawa, we get immersed in what feels like a scene from The Lord of the Rings.

Over a rise in Ron Basford Park (just behind Granville Island’s Performance Works on False Creek), we see a giant tree, “unrooted,” maybe eight meters high, making its laborious way towards us, operated by five puppeteers: one for the body, one for each arm and leg. It’s an impressive sight, and the tree has much to say about nature’s ominous silences as well as the singing that comes from the living forest.

This tree is preparing to die, to return to being “the nurse,” which will help new life emerge. It asks us to “let light grow from your heart” and find “gladness.” It recalls being once covered with butterflies, a memory we help it re-experience by using our programs. It does a joyous dance before collapsing to earth and seeing new leaves and flowers spring from its trunk.

The gravitas of Kanagawa’s narration along with the cleverness of the tree puppet itself, designed by the Koreans, and the very cool ways the puppeteers, all visible to us, animate the tree with precision and grace all make for an experience both profound and fun.

 

 

 

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