The talking tree

In The talking tree by Erna Omarsdóttir and Lieven Dousselaere the talking tree is the tree of life and prosperity. It is a half human, half tree creature which found its incarnation in Erna Omarsdóttir in 2006. Its first appearance was at the 250 years birthday of Mozart in Salzburg at the improvisation event auf der Tisch hosted by Meg Stuart. Then, during the period when Erna Omarsdóttir collaborated with the art collective Poni in creating Soma Sema, PP2, it developed into a kind of prophet and storyteller, a tree that sings and dances strange stories about funny and sad creatures, and characters from Soma Sema and the Poni world as well as from other planes of existence. Omarsdóttir in particular collaborated with the Belgian composer and Poni member Lieven Dousselaere.

The stories resemble myths. They are stories about love, hate, jealousy, greed, power and death. The talking tree is, or thinks it is, about 3000 years old. It thinks it is a prophet, and that it has got all the answers. It also believes it has the power in its hands and that it can transform everything into glitter and gold.

The talking tree is always followed by a melody, a sort of an eternal recurrent theme where end and beginning meet. The melody is the tree’s slave but maybe you could as well say that the tree is the melody’ slave. The melody is a character; destiny, a sad clown, a bleeding body... The two of them don’t exist without each other. The talking tree and its slave have a mission. The mission is to walk around the world and tell stories. Some of the stories are going to change the world.

Icelandic Erna Omarsdóttir was educated at P.A.R.T.S. and she also visited Bergen during the festival Oktoberdans in 2006 with The Mysteries of Love, and with Lieven Dousselaere and the art collective Poni during the theatre festival METEOR 2007.

Sources: Erna Omarsdóttir 2008 www.ernaomarsdottir.com

BIT Teatergarasjen, Oktoberdans 2008. 10.08.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no -archive