You may have experienced outdoor theater before, be it Chillicothe, Ohio’s Tecumseh! or Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s summer tours of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But there is a difference between staging a production in the park and casting the great outdoors as a main character in the play.
This weekend will provide a clear example. Minneapolis-based theater company TigerLion Arts will give audiences an opportunity to experience Nature, a “mythic retelling of Emerson and Thoreau’s mutual love of the natural world.” Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, two of the more famous New England — and American — writers of the 19th century, shone a light on the allure of the natural world with works such as Walden, Thoreau’s reflection on his spiritual quest through a lifestyle rooted in nature.
Nature’s stage is one that the Transcendentalist writers might have appreciated. It occurs amid the meadows and gardens of Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum, just south of Hamilton, Ohio on Hamilton-Cleves Road. Nature is staged as an outdoor walking play, a format that its producer/director/writer Markell Kiefer has long been fascinated with.
“Since we’ve been together, we’ve done five or six walking plays,” says Nature co-writer and actor Tyson Forbes, also Kiefer’s husband. “We’ve done the play in Central Park; we’ve done it out in Los Angeles. It just sings outdoors.”
Forbes plays Emerson in Nature, while Bear Brummel is Thoreau. They are assisted by an ensemble of 11 actors, who play pipes, flutes and drums. The production additionally calls for a volunteer community choir.
Kiefer and Forbes enjoy discovering a new venue and custom-tailoring their show for unique spaces. Some of Nature’s scenes call for intimate nooks in the woods; other scenes require a larger scale. “Everywhere we go, the play feels like it was made for the space,” Forbes says. “We spend an enormous amount of time trying to get that element right. That’s at least half of the play: how (it) interacts with the environment.”
The performers are accustomed to wrestling with weather, noise and unplanned interruptions. “The play is about our experience in nature,” Forbes says. “So if your attention gets drawn away by a flock of birds, or geese walking through the play — which has happened on many occasions — then that’s great, too. There’s space for that. We try to interact with the serendipitous events that happen around us.”
Kiefer and Forbes founded TigerLion to celebrate the very spirit of nature. Forbes is a direct descendant of Emerson. “I’m a sixth-generation Emerson, my boys are seventh generation,” Forbes says. “I grew up in that family, and I always knew I was a descendent. But I never read him until high school, and it went completely over my head.”
Forbes sees Nature as a way to showcase the human side of these literary giants. The walking play is based on a few key events from Thoreau’s and Emerson’s lives, from the first time they met through their tumultuous friendship, with the majority of the script drawn directly from their letters, essays and poems.
Asked what the two writers might have thought of TigerLion’s Nature, Forbes quickly exclaims, “I think they would love it! It refreshes their ideas and their words and brings them to life. I don’t know when the last time is you tried to read ‘Nature’ or one of Emerson’s essays, but you really have to lock in. They are beautiful ideas, but it’s not accessible to a lot of people.”
Forbes and his collaborators have infused the show with humor and humanity, making the subject more approachable. “Growing up in the Emerson family, Emerson was always kind of on a throne, always untouchable,” he says. “I think it’s nice to remember they were also mortals.”
Forbes calls Nature a “dream ride.” Children are highly encouraged to attend the production, as the show was designed with their attention spans in mind. Portable lawn chairs or blankets are suggested for this 90-minute production.
NATURE runs Friday-Sunday at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum. Tickets are $35; $25 Pyramid Hill members; $10 children 12 and under. More info: pyramidhill.org.
This article appears in Sep 14-21, 2016.
