In the beginning there was the forest. Then came the live performance, and then the film. The yellow wagtail, Eurasian skylark, white-backed woodpecker, corncrake and hazel grouse have not only gotten their voices back, but have taken on human form — clad in elegant tailcoats and bearing names — to recount ancient tales. Through the interplay of theatrical metamorphoses and the creative team’s reflections on nature and relationships, a field of meaning unfolds, vaster than any single spectator. Where ends the self, and where begin the wings of birds and the branches of trees? Can culture, standing on the shoulders of nature, also nurture it? Or will it merely glisten in the light like a sawblade?

The truth pecks. But it also opens an entire world that has been left unheard, cut down or diminished. This musical documentary road movie — perhaps the most fitting way to describe this work by theatre and film director Burāne — focuses on rapidly declining bird species and their populations in Latvia and across Europe. Documenting the 2022 production of the same name, with performances in various locations across Latvia featuring the ‘feathered faces’ of Artūrs Čukurs, Elīza Dombrovska, Anna Klišāne, Rūta Dišlere, Armands Siliņš-Bergmanis and the All Birds Choir, this project is a folk-song–borne chorus celebrating the voices of nature. What is a bird to a Latvian: a mythological symbol, a living being, part of the flora, or a performer chirping about its brethren? Can the cultural coexist with the natural? And whom do the birds belong to?