A forest theatre is a generous collaborator and a restless one. The trees do half the design work before you arrive, and they keep revising it: a new shadow at five o'clock, a limb down after a gale, a hollow that turns to soup in October. That is the pleasure of building among them, and also the risk. Before anyone stakes out a stage or orders timber, give the site a full day with a notebook, a spade and a healthy suspicion of your own enthusiasm. The fifteen checks below are the ones most often skipped, and the ones most likely to send you back to the drawing board after the scaffolding has gone up.
Start With the Trees, Not the Stage
1. Tree health and stability. Walk the whole canopy line, not just the trees you plan to build beside. Look for a lean that has worsened recently, soil heaving on the opposite side of the trunk, bark wounds, fungal brackets at the base, and forks with included bark — the tight, V-shaped joints that split under load. Species matters too; some drop limbs far more readily than others. If any tree within falling distance of an audience or a stage looks doubtful, bring in an arboriculturist before the design hardens. A written survey is inexpensive next to a cancelled season.
2. Deadwood overhead. Even a healthy canopy sheds. Stand directly under your proposed seating and look up for a full minute. Hanging limbs, old pruning wounds, hollowed branches, squirrel damage. Clear the audience footprint by a generous margin and book a deadwooding pass before the build, not the week after the first performance.
3. Roots underfoot. Every barrow of timber, every rake, every hundred pairs of boots compacts the soil that keeps your canopy alive. Mark a root protection area around each trunk with stakes and tape, route paths and storage around it, and keep vehicles off entirely. Compaction damage does not announce itself; it shows up years later as thinning crowns and dieback.
Photograph all three checks as you go, with something for scale in frame. The pictures will settle arguments later.
Read the Ground Before You Draw Anything
4. Slope. A gentle fall is a gift: it gives you sightlines for free. A steep one is a drainage problem with a safety issue attached. Take a straight edge and a spirit level, or a taut string line, and measure across the audience area rather than guessing. Anything you would not want to carry a chair up needs steps and a handrail, and remember that raking the seating adds to whatever the ground is already doing.
5. Drainage and soil. Dig a spade-deep hole, fill it with water and see how long it takes to disappear. Better still, come back the day after heavy rain. Clay holds water for days; sand lets it go. A hollow that fills is a poor place for a stage, a sound desk or an aisle. Walk the site's edges and note where water enters and where it leaves — most wet stages are a problem uphill, not underneath.
Write down what you find, in plain words: soil type, visible water table, frost pockets, any ground that stays soft into spring, and the location of every drain or ditch. Then draw it on the plan.
Light, Wind and the Shape of a Day
6. Sun path and light quality. Forest light is the design. Visit at the hour you intend to perform, not at eleven in the morning. Low afternoon sun through a thin canopy can blind half the audience; deep shade at eight in the evening can be magical or unusable, depending on the trees. Mark where the sun sets relative to your proposed stage and decide early whether you are building for daylight, dusk or dark.
7. Wind exposure. Look for evidence rather than forecasts: trees bent away from a prevailing direction, a flag of branches on one side, windthrow scars in the neighbouring wood. Clearings funnel wind, and a gap that looks sheltered in summer can whistle in September. Tie a ribbon to a tall pole for a week and watch it. If you plan canvas, drapes or tall scenic pieces, this check decides their fate before you pay for them.
Sound and Sightlines
8. Natural acoustics. Woodland swallows high frequencies and flatters low ones, and hard trunks can throw odd reflections back at the stage. Test it properly: have someone speak and sing from the stage while you sit in the back row and the side rows. Listen for what masks the performance — a road beyond the ridge, a stream, aircraft, a neighbouring farm, birds at dawn. Note the quietest hour and build your schedule around it.
9. Sightlines. Sit on the ground at the back, on a bale at the side, and on a folding chair in the middle. Check for trunks that stand precisely where a protagonist will. Plan for seated eye height, not standing, and remember that small audiences move; leave gaps so people can shift without climbing over each other.
Access, Egress and the Bad Day
10. The everyday route. Measure your path properly. It needs to take a wheelchair, a barrow and a pushchair, ideally without a gradient that would trouble them in the wet. Check gate widths, surfaces, and whether the walk out at dusk will need lighting. Somewhere to leave a car matters more than most people expect.
When Something Goes Wrong
11. Emergency vehicle access. Ask the blunt question: if someone is hurt in the third row, where does an ambulance stop and how far does the crew carry? Identify a clear rendezvous point on a made surface, confirm the address works for a satnav, and test the phone signal on site with the network you actually use.
12. Evacuation and communication. Write the plan down before you need it:
- A clear exit route that does not pass through the stage or the lighting position.
- A named meeting point away from the trees, known to the whole company.
- Two people carrying charged radios or phones, with each other's numbers written on paper.
- A stocked first aid kit at the front of house, and someone trained to use it.
- A weather call-off rule agreed in advance, so nobody has to make the decision in a downpour.
Permission and People
13. Landownership. Find out who owns the trees, the track and the field you cross to reach them; these are often three different people. Get written permission with dates, and keep it with the build file. A friendly nod in a car park is not a right.
14. Protected trees and planning. Check with your local planning authority before the design hardens — tree protection orders, conservation area rules, felling licences and any change-of-use questions all have long lead times. Wildlife matters too: nesting birds and roosting bats constrain when you can cut and prune. Take professional advice on the specifics in your area rather than relying on what worked on a neighbouring site.
15. Neighbours, noise and insurance. Tell the people who will hear you before they hear you. Agree finishing times, warn them about the technical rehearsal, and give them a number to call that a human answers. Confirm public liability cover for the build as well as the performances, and be clear about who is responsible when a contractor is on site. This is another area where a short conversation with a broker or solicitor is worth the fee.
The Walk-Through That Saves the Build
Go back to the site once more, at performance time, ideally in poor weather. Sit in the worst seat. Walk the emergency route in the dark. Stand on the stage and look up. Take the checklist with you and mark every item in pencil, because half of them will shift once the leaves come down.
Forest theatres reward patience in the planning far more than cleverness in the building. If the trees are sound, the ground drains, the sound carries and an ambulance can reach you, everything else is scenery — and scenery is the easy part.
Photo: NickyPe / Pixabay
