The Forest Comes Alive!

Music, Theatre, Environmental Art, Poetry, Ecology Workshops. All This and the work of R. Murray Schafer too, featured in the Forest Festival in the Haliburton Highlands.

This summer something special is happening in the forest. A celebration of music, art and the environment, aptly named The Forest Festival, takes place from August 25 – Sept 3 at various locations throughout the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. The Forest Festival is the result of a partnership between Patria Music/Theatre Projects and the Haliburton Forest. Audiences and participants are invited to experience everything from poetry readings in the woods and on the water, stirring brass music echoing across a lake, great blues tunes resonating off the old timbers of a logging museum, installation art by noted environmental artists to educational workshops exploring the ecology of sound.

Last but not least, as piece de resistance, Patria Music/Theatre Projects is once again bringing the remarkable environmental theatre work of renowned Canadian composer, writer, educator and ‘acoustic ecologist’ R. Murray Schafer to the shores of a wilderness lake deep within the Haliburton Forest & Wildlife Reserve. Audiences will have the chance to experience a work described as “the most significant, remarkable and unique music theatre creation in Canadian history.” Mr. Schafer’s works reflect his reverence for the environment and draw their inspiration from ancient myth and ritual. Part opera, part theatre spectacular, part sacred ceremony, this year’s show, “The Princess of the Stars” defies description. Beginning at 4.00 a.m. audiences will gather in the pre-dawn hush, listen to Mr. Schafer’s haunting score and, while the sun rises, watch an epic battle on the water as more than 60 performers, musicians, singers, dancers, canoeists and craftspeople weave a spell of magic and mystery. Canadian media have said “the effect is beyond description” and have called R. Murray Schafer’s work “wildly imaginative and physically ambitious”.

For information about accommodations in the Haliburton Highlands, visit http://www.haliburtonholidays.com.

Patria Music/Theatre Projects is a not-for-profit organization formed in 1987 to produce the Patria Cycle of environmental theatre works while at the same time increasing public appreciation of the aesthetic arts and providing performance and skill enhancement opportunities