Throughout July 18 and 19, visitors arrived at South Philadelphia’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park with a unique task — to perform for a tree.
The production, “Arborlogues,” is a touring piece developed by Other Forms Of (OFO) Theater, a company led by set designer Dan Daly that emphasizes theatrical experimentation through unorthodox sets. Billed as a “botanical recital,” “Arborlogues” was born during the COVID-19 lockdown, when companies like OFO were forced to reimagine the definitions of theater under quarantine.
“I came with this idea of a play you perform for yourself … and it developed into the idea of performing for a tree, using the tree as a mirror for the self,” Daly says.
The result is a 15-minute monologue performed from the confines of a thick velvet curtain that encircles a tree’s trunk. Within the intimate space, theatergoers address their arboreal audience through a personalized script composed by playwright Lee LeBreton.
Each time a performance is booked for a new tree, the script is rewritten. “When we find out what tree it is, the first thing we do is research, research, research,” Daly says. “We research the type of tree, the specific tree, the land the tree is on … I like to say, ‘What is it the tree needs?’”
“Arborlogues” has been performed in Brooklyn and New England and even toured in New Zealand. For the FDR Park production, Daly says, selecting the right tree was easy.
Anisa George, a volunteer with Save The Meadows, reached out to Daly in 2025, suggesting an “Arborlogues” production in FDR Park’s South Meadows, a shuttered golf course that rewilded during COVID-19. The Meadows has been the site of an ongoing legal battle between the City, which aims to execute a renovation plan that would excavate much of the land and transform it into a complex of wetlands and synthetic turf athletic fields, and Save The Meadows, which advocates for maintaining the “almost 100 acres of tree canopy and wildlife habitat,” according to the organization’s website.
“Anisa was like, ‘I know the exact tree you need to do this for, because it’s a big, magnificent tree,’” Daly recalls.
The tree at the center of the FDR Park production was a stately silver maple, one of the heritage trees surrounding the Meadows. Despite its status, the tree, along with hundreds of its neighbors, is slated to be cut down as part of the renovation.
“There’s a question mark around this land and what’s going to happen with it, so that’s where this specific script started to blossom from,” Daly says.
Produced in tandem with Save The Meadows, the performance drew many theatergoers already familiar with their audience’s uncertain future. “Many people that came to see the show already have a relationship to the meadows and already have ideas about what it is and what it should be,” Daly says. “There were actually a couple people that were even feeling emotional before they went into the piece, which was kind of new for us.”
When addressing the audience, the performer references the maple’s ambiguous future, acknowledging that its wood, which today provides shelter for wildlife and shade for passing humans, may someday become lumber.
Whatever its future holds, Daly hopes that the maple’s time as the subject of “Arborlogues” has added to its existence. “One of the beautiful things I think about this piece is that it draws you individually to a specific tree to give you that connection,” Daly says. “This tree now has memories with all these people and these people all have memories with this tree, so hopefully we’ll be able to hold on to a little bit of it.”
