“Trees tell stories. They tell of the earth, the water, the people, the animals, the weather, and time. They tell of the lives they have lived. Trees are narratives, but one must learn how to understand them.”
–Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree, 2023
Treework is an opera for an ensemble of humans and trees, created in collaboration with trees in the forest of Østmarka in Oslo. It is an attempt to open ourselves up to the inherent knowledge that trees carry with them.
The work is based on the assumption that trees are creative beings that express themselves through movement and music. Through our work with the trees, we find ways to let human performers execute the trees' songs and movements. In other words, Treework is choreographed and composed by trees – we are simply building a bridge between different forms of expression.
Treework premiered during the Oerol Festival in the Netherlands in June 2025, with an ensemble of pine and oak trees in a forest planted a hundred years ago to ensure the sandy island would not blow away into the sea.
The idea behind Treework is to create an opera for humans and trees. An opera, because the drama unfolds in the voice and the music; a grand form for a large and complex ensemble, with a short distance to the body and movement. An opera, because breath is something that connects humans and trees. The lungs are an opening, a contact surface between the external world and the body, making it impossible to say where the body ends. The trees breathe out, we breathe in. The trees have thousands of mouths on all their leaves that gape, sing, gasp, and whisper as long as the sun shines. Is it possible to hear this song?
● The project is led by Espen Hjort and Mees Borgman, who collaborate under the name Landmarks. Ecology is at the core of their work—they seek to look beyond the human perspective. They last visited Black Box teater in 2023 with Stonework, the first performance in the series created in collaboration with non-human co-creators.
Treework will take place in Østmarka. Details will be published soon
