November 15, 2012 - It was a season of light, a spring of hope. Suddenly they had a forest before them, and then they had nothing before them.

 

That may have been how nearly 30 NCSSM students perceived the strange and mesmerizing production of How to Build a Forest in Duke University’s Page Auditorium.

 

Produced by artists PearlDamour (Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour) and Shawn Hall of New Orleans, How to Build a Forest is a tale of two realities – the mystery, and the fragility, of the natural world. Over the course of an eight-hour-long production, a simulated forest is assiduously assembled, and then abruptly and completely razed.

 

Said NCSSM student Shaza Gaballah ’13: “Going in, I expected that the performance would be creative, but I didn’t expect to like it too much. Coming out, it’s safe to say that ‘awe-inspired’ doesn’t even cover it. I left feeling like I had been meditating, or like someone had just slapped me – it was  simply beautiful in a way that I hadn’t been prepared for.”

 

The idea germinated after Hurricane Katrina uprooted 100 trees from D’Amour’s family home, leaving the landscape unrecognizable. She and Pearl watched as the community gradually rebuilt itself, person by person, house by house.

 

With How to Build a Forest, they try to give viewers a personal relationship to the burgeoning forest onstage. The artists who assemble the forest often vocalize in unison and interact in mysterious ways with visitors. Viewers are encouraged to come onstage to observe up close the forest in its stages of development.

 

“I expected everything to be much louder,” said Jamie Smith ‘13, “but it was a quiet and spiritual experience. You could really tell that what they were doing was extremely important to them. It took all of their attention. They were part of the forest, through their breathing and the sounds that they made. One person handed Shaza a note that said, ‘We are going as fast as we can.’”

 

Shaza Gaballah '13 and Jamie Smith '13 pose with their own forest creation, made with help from former NCSSM instructor Bryant Holsenbeck.

 

In part hosted by Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, the production was staged in the spirit of integrating the arts and sciences. Local K-12 schools were invited to attend and create a curriculum to coincide with the performance. That interested NCSSM Dean of Science Amy Sheck, who encouraged NCSSM students to attend.

 

“Science communication often falls flat,” Sheck said. “These artists are connecting in a very different mode.”

 

Sheck wanted students to reflect on how their scientific interests might be communicated in different ways, so she developed a lesson plan inspired by the installation, asking students to consider how they convey science to a lay audience.

 

Sheck and Ecology teacher Emily Maxwell asked their students to pick a tree in the Chapel Forest adjacent to Duke’s Bryan Center, research it, and select a way to best communicate to a lay person what they found most important or interesting about that tree. Students then returned to the forest with their project and presented their research to someone visiting the forest.

 

Shaza Gaballah '13 presents her tree selection, the mockernut hickory.

 

“I wanted students to reflect on their experiences in trying to communicate science, and to ask questions such as, ‘How is a general public audience different from a scientific audience?’ and ‘Why should science be communicated to the general public?’” said Sheck.

 

Students also had the occasion to work on a communal art project, working with artist and  former NCSSM instructor Bryant Holsenbeck to weave their own forest creation from wire and fabric.

 

How to Build a Forest was funded in part by a Visiting Artist Grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Provost, Duke University, and a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the NC Arts Council as well as support from Duke’s Department of Theater Studies and the Nicholas School of the Environment.

 

View a video of the forest creation during a performance of How to Build a Forest.

 

See all the lesson plans created by participating schools.