The Memory of Trees at The Brussels City Theatre

And the secret to keep an entire city at bay. Not a ghost town because life animates this mysterious city. However silence envelops not just its schools, its parks, its hospitals, but even its name. And it spreads to its fields, its river and to its children’s laughter.

In the heart of this place not found on any map, thousands of people are forced to maintain this enormous secret. And those who present even a shadow of treason pay for it with their lives. Others, manipulated, are convinced they are protecting the country by supporting the lie. Together they preserve a vast industrial state and keep quiet about an unheard of environmental catastrophe.One could think this story is straight out of science fiction. But it isn’t. This secret city and its abuses are part of our world. Even if humankind tries to muzzle the truth, the memory of the trees remain, those of the consciousness that rises and denounces this heavy decades-old screed.

Travelling is an integral part of Fabrice Murgia’s art. The Ghost Road cycle has taken him to singular places where camera on his shoulder he has recorded faces, testimony and encounters. The memory of trees (Ghost Road III) is part of this process. The show’s team has walked these hostile lands and with Josse De Pauw as story teller/historian and composer Dominique Pauwels, it offers us the unmentionable in music and poetry.