I’ve seen scores of children’s shows. Talky and unfocused, Me & the Forest is one of the worst.
It has been co-produced by Boca del Lupo and Korea’s ArtStageSAN, and it’s being performed outdoors in the Ron Basford Amphitheatre on Granville Island as part of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival.
The first thing that happens in this puppet show is that a character named Sol, who is a forest spirt, arrives to lay down the rules, which are basically that we should listen and not talk. (“Be quiet.” Fantastic. Exactly what every kid wants to hear.)
Then Mitig arrives. Operated by five people using rods to control his movement, Mitig is a big tree who has uprooted himself and started wandering. But, for virtually the entire performance, Mitig’s precise goal remains unclear. He’s escaping the forest fires that have silenced some of his cousins and he’s looking for “the right spot” for… something. Which is pretty vague. He wants to be of use. Still vague.
Theatrically, this lack of focus means a couple of very bad things: the stakes never feel high or pressing and, lacking a clear goal, Mitig takes no action whatsoever to achieve anything. Nothing happens; Mitig just stands there and talks at us.
He briefly mentions mycelium. Not sure that’s in every child’s vocabulary. He goes woo-woo: “Let the light flow from the heartwood.” Annoyingly, there are insincere invitations to ask questions of Mitig. Mitig’s voice is prerecorded, so genuine interaction is impossible; Sol asks scripted questions for us — reading our minds, in the convention of the script. Those questions include, out of nowhere, an invitation for Mitig to share his thoughts on death.
Attempts at humour are so weak they’re barely recognizable as such: “I know. I know. It’s hard to be disconnected from all your relatives, the worldwide web.” (I know this was a joke because Mitig chuckled after saying it. This may or may not have been a reference to mycelium.) The biggest laughs came near the end of the performance, when Mitig made two complaints, “This is not a very interesting talk show” and “That was not as much fun as we thought it would be.”
The puppet designs (by Ru Ji Yun and Jo Hyun San of ArtStageSAN) are handsome.
So that we can hear Mitig’s voice, everybody in the audience wears headsets, but I felt more alienated than liberated by mine.
Because this show is at least theoretically designed for kids and I didn’t bring a child with me, I asked a couple of kids from the audience what the best and worst parts were. In my experience writing and performing for children, elementary school-age kids are reluctant to cause offense, so I wasn’t surprised when the boy, who was about eight, answered, “I don’t think there were any worst parts.” But then he added, “I don’t think there were any best parts either.”
His slightly older sister — maybe 10? — chimed in, “I liked the ending.”
I did too. After faffing around for freaking ever, Me & the Forest creates a charming moment of audience participation that involves butterflies. And that’s followed by a meditative passage about death and renewal. Finally, for maybe five minutes, Me & the Forest hit a groove for me.
In the first decade of the two thousands, Boca del Lupo created a series of terrific site-specific works, including The Last Stand, Vasily the Luckless, and Quasimodo. Me & the Forest is not of the same quality. But it is the first part of a projected trilogy. Here’s hoping the next two installments tell focused stories theatrically — and create genuine audience engagement.
ME & THE FOREST Created by Jay Dodge, Sherry J. Yoon, Ru Ji Yun, and Jo Hyun San. Featuring the writing of Yvette Nolan. Directed by Sherry J. Yoon. Coproduced by Boca del Lupo and ArtStageSAN. At the Ron Basford Amphitheatre as part of the Vancouver International children’s Festival until June 14. Tickets and information.
PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Oleksii Popov)
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