If you wish to really feel small and humbled by nature, stand subsequent to a redwood tree; if you wish to really feel highly effective and intertwined with nature, simply stand there a little bit longer. Whereas it’d sound like a paradox, it’s merely a matter of perspective—and it’s the message theater and movie star Idina Menzel is singing all the way down to us on earth from her short-term dwelling within the cover.
Menzel, who co-conceived and stars within the immersive new musical Redwood, is taking audiences alongside on a journey without delay deeply private and wholly common in its exploration of individuals’s reference to themselves, one another and the pure world. The present opened on February 13 on the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway and tickets are on sale by means of July 6, 2025.
At REI Co-op, we all know that point spent exterior is extra than simply recreation: It’s pivotal for our well-being. To raised research the correlation between nature and well being, the REI Cooperative Motion Fund has partnered with analysis and educational establishments exploring how and why and time outdoor can profit us all. Since 2018, REI has partnered with the College of Washington’s Heart for Nature and Well being, offering grants to fund analysis like a 2024 research concerning the outdoor’ skill to enhance an individual’s emotional regulation and general well-being. Comparable work by one other REI Cooperative Motion Fund grant companion, the College of California’s Heart for Nature and Well being, has proven that nature could be an efficient group well being software, with research contributors displaying decrease blood stress and decreased rumination after spending a further hour every week exterior.
However to harness the therapeutic powers of nature, we have to defend it. Advocating for optimistic change on the legislative degree, the REI Cooperative Motion Community helps initiatives that defend native and nationwide parks, oceans, and old-growth forests, whereas rising outside fairness and discovering local weather options.
Redwoods, for instance, are a number of the world’s tallest residing bushes, able to rising almost 400 ft tall and surviving hundreds of years. They seize carbon, preserve biodiversity and supply meals and shelter for wildlife, assist include erosion from wind and water, and have wealthy Indigenous cultural significance that can’t be changed. They’re additionally underneath risk: Logging, real-estate improvement and wildfire suppression techniques that stress the bushes’ habitats have drastically decreased the United State’s old-growth and mature forests. In 2024, greater than 46,000 REI Co-op Members took motion with the REI Cooperative Motion Community to urge the U.S. Forest Service to guard our old-growth forests.
Longstanding efforts to guard these mighty giants instantly impressed Redwood too: Greater than a decade in the past, Menzel approached writer-director Tina Landau a couple of story that she couldn’t get out of her thoughts. Within the late Nineteen Nineties, activist Julia Butterfly Hill lived in a redwood tree for 738 days to attract consideration to the devastation attributable to logging in historical groves. She saved that tree and sparked an thought for Menzel and Landau that will develop and bend over time, like a sapling reaching up for the sky: How can one particular person’s relationship to the bushes change the world?
Whereas Redwood isn’t truly about Hill’s 200-foot-tall treehouse, it does go to nice heights: Menzel’s character, Jesse, finds herself confronted with a grief that sends her operating West, searching for escape and therapeutic, and encounters a little bit journey alongside the best way. (Trace: There’s aerial choreography by the Oakland, California–primarily based BANDALOOP.)
Unusual Path just lately caught up with Menzel and Landau by way of electronic mail to study extra concerning the present and the bushes that impressed it.
The following interviews have been edited for size and readability.
Unusual Path: What impressed you to create a present that takes place among the many redwoods, and what’s your private relationship with these old-growth bushes?
Tina Landau: It was a confluence of occasions. Idina got here to me with an thought a couple of lady in a tree as a result of she’d been impressed by the real-life story of Julia Butterfly Hill. She was defending the tree and bringing consciousness to the endangerment of our forests.
Idina Menzel: This concept of escaping and with the ability to depart every little thing behind once you really feel probably the most alone or misunderstood was an intriguing thought to me. I used to be impressed by Julia Butterfly Hill—the power and fortitude it could take to dwell on the prime of a redwood tree, that’s what appealed to me at first.
TL: I’d all the time been obsessive about bushes, and I used to be exploring the concept of a musical primarily based on Italo Calvino’s e book The Baron within the Timber. Throughout the identical time, I additionally made a number of journeys to the [northern California] redwoods—and my life was ceaselessly modified. I used to be awed by their dimension and age and majesty however, extra considerably, I realized astonishing issues about them. The extra I realized about how they develop, survive, resist hearth, have communal roots methods, the extra I wished to share their wonders with everybody on this planet!
The 2 of you first mentioned this concept nearly 15 years in the past, earlier than lastly selecting it again up through the COVID-19 pandemic. That decade and a half, after all, has been a interval of large environmental change and problem worldwide. How has the story modified—and the way has it modified you—over that point?
IM: It’s modified a lot through the years. As this story began to take form, I fell in love with the redwoods as a real testomony to resilience, standing sturdy for hundreds of years. We’ve carried out many journeys as much as northern California to truly climb the bushes and expertise issues firsthand, and it’s completely modified my perspective on the story that we try to inform. A method we’ve been prepping for this present is by studying to climb (and the entire forged is now licensed climbers!), which has allowed me to completely immerse myself in Jesse’s life and story.
TL: A lot has been found about redwoods [throughout the show’s development] and I proceed making little changes within the script primarily based on latest science and new issues I study. Like most of our planet, redwoods have develop into more and more threatened by local weather change—nevertheless it’s additionally develop into clear how redwoods are our nice allies in combating local weather change. Outdated-growth, coastal redwoods seize extra carbon dioxide from energy crops, vans, automobiles and the like than another bushes on earth—about triple the quantity that tropical rain forests do. Studying this, I adjusted our scientist characters’ work so that they’re now finding out carbon sequestration. How may this not be a part of our story?
Whereas conducting analysis for the present, had been you in a position to companion with any activists or scientists working towards the conservation of old-growth bushes?
IM: Whereas creating the present, we labored intently with thought leaders from organizations who’re doing wonderful work within the environmental safety house. I had a magical day with a person named Tim Kovar from Tree Climbing Planet, who is among the few individuals permitted to enter the cover of a redwood, and he took me up there and taught me much more concerning the redwoods. In return, I sang for him.
TL: I’ve a video of her singing songs from the present whereas perching on a department 200 ft within the air!
Being in nature is such a singular expertise that appears arduous to recreate inside a Broadway theater. How will you carry the expertise of being within the redwoods to the room?
IM: Our set is a brilliant particular place and idea. It’s immersive and makes you are feeling like you might be in the midst of these bushes, or surrounded by stars, or inside Jesse’s head. It seems like a wonderful daydream.
TL: Ah sure—precisely! We all know we may by no means recreate the redwood forest inside a theater, so we’re not even attempting to. What we are attempting to seize is the expertise of that world by means of the eyes and coronary heart and thoughts of our essential character. The viewers enters a world, an expertise, greater than a place. A spot, an precise forest, is just too literal. Our visuals are extra poetic: They’re subjective, expansive, shocking, emotional.
Do you hope that the present evokes motion to guard the redwoods or different wild and pure areas within the U.S.?
IM: I hope that by (re)introducing audiences to the redwoods, they depart the present feeling empowered to get entangled in activism, environmental or in any other case, and prioritize spending extra time in nature.
TL: What our present gives is “getting up nearer and private” with one particular redwood. I hope that by understanding redwoods higher, our audiences shall be extra inclined to try our checklist of assets, get entangled, do extra analysis on their very own, spend extra time in nature.
What do you hope audiences take away from the musical?
TL: A way of their connection to others and to nature. An consciousness of how a lot all of us have to hyperlink collectively, because the roots of the redwoods do, and depend on one another to face tall. Additionally, inspiration to dwell, as one of many songs says, “huge and full and deep,” and keep in mind that regardless of how a lot ache or impediment comes our manner: “There’s nonetheless the sunshine / There’s nonetheless the sky / There’s nonetheless the leaves / That rustle within the breeze.”
IM: My hope is that audiences depart the theater feeling a little bit bit nearer to these round them and take solace within the thought of grounding your self in nature.
Advocate for Nature’s Therapeutic Powers
For 87 years, REI Co-op Members have advocated for all times outdoor. The co-op is proud to companion with Redwood to assist carry the facility of nature alive each inside and out of doors the theater. Be a part of the REI Cooperative Motion Community to make sure everybody can entry the therapeutic energy of nature. Go to REI.com/redwood to help analysis that advances and communicates the understanding of the well being advantages associated to partaking with nature.
The submit Idina Menzel Goes Into the Timber with “Redwood” appeared first on Unusual Path – An REI Co-op Publication.
