What is your tree? In this film, artist Shana Moulton and composer Nick Hallett collaborate on the opera Whispering Pines 10—rehearsing and performing this one-act production at the New Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the RhizomeNew Silent series. The opera, directed by Elyse Singer, features additional performances from the soprano Daisy Press, voicing the subconscious thoughts of Moulton’s alter-ego Cynthia, and the vocalist Katie Eastburn who plays an environmental activist modeled after Julia “Butterfly” Hill, who famously lived for over two years in a 1,000-year-old California Redwood tree in order to protect it from being cut down. A new take on the operatic form of the monodrama or “mad scene,” the agoraphobic and hypochondriacal Cynthia struggles with her domestic interior—filled with kitschy New Age objects—turning to nature to discover that her life is boundless and full of magic.
From the series, "New York Close Up"