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The Thousand Year Theatre

  • The photograph for A Thousand Year Theatre depicts a person looking up at the sky while standing in a forest.

The Thousand Year Theatre is a native plant botanical ‘set’ planted from BC’s native forest species that take a millennium to mature.  It is designed to be used for an outdoor theatre show in 1000 years’ time. The collaboration is between The Only Animal in 2020 and horticulturists and art makers far in the future. It is about the Culture of Stewardship, how we act now by holding the future with utmost care. It involves collaborators from the kids’ climate movement at the inception, as part of the legacy of the piece, with the intention that every generation of caretakers will envision and shape the space. In a time where native species like cedar, the mother species of our forests, are showing stress from climate change, our work of stewardship is critical. It looks at ecological succession in the frame of climate change, where trees are slowly migrating North to cooler climes. The Thousand Year Theatre is a fierce belief in the future and a growing reminder for our human community Human Nature is Nature itself.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

DATE: In Production

VENUE: Clack Creek Clearcut and the City of Vancouver

WITH: Elfinstone Logging Focus (ELF) and Living Forest Institute (LFI)