Me & the Forest poses big questions at Vancouver International Children’s Festival
In the new show by Vancouver’s Boca del Lupo and South Korea’s ArtstageSAN, a talking tree interacts with members of the audience
Me & the Forest
Boca del Lupo and ArtstageSAN present Me & the Forest as part of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, which takes place on Granville Island from May 25 to 31
THE GREAT AUSTRIAN philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” In Wittgenstein’s view, the lived experience of a lion is so far removed from the human world that even if it tried to express it to us, that experience would remain beyond our ability to grasp it.
Mind you, Wittgenstein died in 1951, long before the advent of artificial intelligence, or what passes for it in 2026. No, we’re not debating global politics with lions just yet, but—as Boca del Lupo cofounder Jay Dodge learned from a newspaper report—various researchers are engaged in using acoustic analysis and machine learning in an attempt to interpret whalesong.
“In this article they were saying that we were between six months and 24 months away from having conversations with whales,” Dodge says in a telephone interview with Stir. “And that just blew my mind. I started to imagine—if that is in fact the case and whales are half as intelligent as we think they probably are—if we can talk to them, what does that mean? Do they start intersecting with our laws? Do they start voting in our elections?”
Dodge found himself pondering these questions at a fortuitous time. Boca del Lupo, which he started 30 years ago with his co–artistic director Sherry J. Yoon, was looking for a subject to explore in collaboration with the South Korean puppet-theatre company ArtstageSAN.
The Me & the Forest crew
“We had done a lot of outdoor, site-specific work,” Dodge says. “We had done a lot of work with technology. And they’re master puppeteers; they’ve been working in various forms of puppetry for decades. And so we were like, ‘What’s the container that is the perfect combination of these collaborators?’”
That newspaper article provided the spark that got Dodge thinking about what would happen if humankind could suddenly communicate directly with nature. Boca del Lupo and ArtstageSAN will work together to produce three shows on this theme, each focusing on a different ambassador from the natural world—from the forest, a tree; from the sky, a bird; and from the ocean, a whale.
That last one will have to wait, though.
“I really wanted to start with the whale,” Dodge says. “I wanted to make a full-size whale that emerged from the water. That felt like a technical challenge that needed a bit more time, so we decided to start with the tree.”
Along with ArtstageSAN’s ingenious puppet makers, Dodge and Yoon worked with writer Yvette Nolan to develop the first installment of the planned trilogy. Titled Me & the Forest, the show will premiere at Granville Island’s Ron Basford Park as part of this year’s Vancouver International Children’s Festival.
The tree, a five-metre-tall puppet that requires five performers to operate, is voiced by actor Hiro Kanagawa. Named Mitig, the ancient conifer is accompanied by a smaller puppet, a sort of forest spirit named Sol, and the two help the young audience navigate some big questions.
Says Dodge, “If a tree could speak to you, would you be able to understand? Would it be too densely poetic? We have all these assumptions as humans about our supremacy as the sole sentient species on the planet. But there’s an arrogance to that.
“When two cultures come together, we often look at our differences,” he continues. “We bring different concepts to the table around things that we take for granted within our own context. I feel like that’s also part of the play. I feel like if you’re talking to a tree, they might also be interested in us as much as we are in them.”
Me & the Forest is not a play, per se, in that there is no set storyline, and much relies upon the dynamic between the viewer and the puppet.
“The tree has its stories, and there is some interaction with the audience,” Dodge notes. “We have these wireless headphones that the audience is on, and the idea there is that it’s essentially like a telepathic connection with the tree, who has decided to take this opportunity to uproot itself and come and speak to humans for the first time. We definitely break down the fourth wall and ask the audience to suspend its disbelief and arrive as if they’re among the chosen few to have this first conversation between humanity and trees.”
Dodge admits that there are dangers inherent in putting on a show reliant on a giant puppet interacting with kids in an outdoor setting. What if Mitig’s intricate mechanisms don’t work as intended? What if an atmospheric river turns the park into one big outdoor shower? What if someone in the audience asks questions for which the tree has no answers? So many variables!
“Both companies have been making work for 30 years or so, so part of it is trusting your artistic intuition from that experience,” Dodge says. “But there’s an element of risk. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that every now and then I wake up in the morning going, ‘I hope this works.’ But I think it will. I really think it will. All my instincts tell me it will.” 
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