The Wild Seed Thief

I’ve been thinking about trees…
Living close to a regenerating forest – the Waitakere Ranges – I imagine the giant trees that must have stood here: what it must have been like growing for millennia without human involvement. What would the birds have sounded like?

Trees operate on a much slower time scale than humans, including their electrical impulses. Most are only just adult at 100 years and many have life spans of over a thousand years. Peter Wohlleben has written a book called The Hidden Life of Trees. He speaks of ancient and wild forests talking to each other through their roots and the soil to share nutrients and defences.

This makes me think about growing things. And seeds. Kernels of knowledge, little packets of life that can sometimes stay waiting for the right conditions for thousands of years.

And about children in the wild…
I’m really drawn to a picture of a Colombian girl going to school on a zipline with her brother in a sack (as he is too little to travel the precarious ride alone). It inspired the beginning of a story: orphan siblings living in a future with huge sprawling cities and an unpredictable climate, where rain turns to fire and trees are a memory. They discover a wild seed store and they are set on a transforming journey.

I find myself building pictures with paper and light. Thinking about how actors might manipulate this world and bring it to life. How the cities might appear from the floor, like pop-up, and how the roots of trees might grow down from the roof; how the characters might shift and change, perhaps turning into animals or having animal traits. How the audience might be involved in creating a change in the space.

Being a practical creator, I lean towards making the pictures and then following these ideas to find ways to bring them to life. What you might see at The Navigators in October is a peek into this development process. A few scenes, a developing world and language, some characters, some ideas for set and perhaps sound. It might also be a chance to contribute to the work’s early
development through feedback and the creation of some flying seeds. We will see!