Chapter 3: "Librettising" ecology to create Lipote: An Interconnected Journey
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Context of the Research and Influences
3.3 Synopsis
3.4 Developing the Script
3.4.a Communication: Influence from the Science
3.4.b Exploring Different Worlds: Panarchy and Adaptive
3.4.c Soil
3.4.d The Fungal Network
3.4.e The Narrator
3.4.f The Humans
3.4.g The Rainforest
i. A Framework for the Rainforest
iii. Exploring the Rainforest through Cycles of Collaboration
3.4.h The Palm Tree Plantation
3.4.i Lipote as the Loner Tree and the "Fiery Edge"
3.4.j The Strangler Fig
3.4.k The Forest Garden (or Taungya) and the Marriage
3.6 Future Steps and Conclusion
3.3 Synopsis
The outcome of the narrative shows four very different plant-based communities: a rainforest, a palm plantation, a strangler fig and a forest garden/taungya. The story follows the journey of a single tree (a Lipote tree) which volunteers to go in search of help outside the rainforest. I was inspired to write a journey narrative having recently written a libretto for an adaption of Journey to the West (see appendix AP 3.4). This Chinese epic tale is lengthy – comprising 100 chapters – with many characters and trials faced by Xuanzang on his arduous journey to collect the scriptures from the Buddha, to save the many orphaned souls of the underworld. It would not be feasible for this piece to involve such a long and detailed journey in an opera of 1hr 20min, and I also had to limit the characters to the number of singers available, but it did encourage me to make use of a physical journey, with a protagonist in search of help for those suffering at home, as another example of a traditional and mythological narrative.
The trigger for Lipote’s journey is when the Rainforest is wounded in a violent electrical storm losing many of its most important large trees. The Lipote tree volunteers to help and, along with the Rainforest’s fungal network, grows its roots and mycorrhizae into the Palm Tree Plantation, the land of the Strangler Fig and the Forest Garden. When it reaches the Forest Garden, a land which is managed by human settlers who live in harmony with the forest, Lipote feels it has found somewhere which can help, but as it fuses with the fungus there the ground is dug up by machinery. The final scene sees Lipote with the Rainforest, discussing the knowledge it has gained. As they talk they realise, through a planted fruit tree (a durian tree), that the human settlers from the Forest Garden have been displaced and travelled to now live in the Rainforest. This may bring some help and support after the violent storm, but it will also mean that the Rainforest needs to accommodate human life. Ultimately it is a very simple story, which leaves room for each newly discovered world to be framed by the action and interactions between the characters in each scene..