Tree Speech
Tree Speech

Tree Speech

Dori Robinson, Jonathan Zautner, Alight Theater Guild

Overview
Episodes

Details

Alight Theater Guild presents Tree Speech, a blend of narrative storytelling, interviews, and wanderlust at the intersection of the personal, historical and cultural ways that trees impact our lives. Each episode seeks to find new understandings to the tangled relationships we have with the natural world in which we inhabit. We examine folklore, history, holidays, and current events while exploring trees in our conversations around race, religion, and resources with people who all share deep connections to them-from artists and writers to historians and educators, advocates to activists.

Recent Episodes

Loving Trees
FEB 13, 2025
Loving Trees

In honor of Valentine's Day, this episode is full of love! We are excited to celebrate the holiday by examining the 5 Love Languages and how they apply to trees. Dori Robinson also leads a meditation around love and the Jewish New Year of Trees, Tu B'Shevat, which also occurs this week.

Click here for more information on the Melbourne Urban Forest Visual with information.

Click here for examples of letters sent to the trees in Melbourne.

Find information about the Park Avenue Armory's Wish Tree Installation here


This week’s episode was written and recorded in Massachusetts on the native lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, Pennacook, Massa-adchu-es-et (Massachusett), and Pawtucket people, and in New York on the land of the Lenapee tribes. 

Tree Speech is co-written, edited, and produced by Jonathan Zautner and we thank ⁠⁠Alight Theatre Guild⁠⁠ for their support. 

To learn more about our podcast and episodes, please visit ⁠⁠⁠treespeechpodcast.com⁠⁠⁠ and consider supporting us through our ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠ - every contribution supports our production, and we’ll be giving gifts of gratitude to patrons of all levels. Please also consider passing the word, and rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Every kind word helps. 

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23 MIN
Giving Trees featuring "The Giving Tree Continued" by Jamie Roach
NOV 27, 2024
Giving Trees featuring "The Giving Tree Continued" by Jamie Roach

It’s Giving Tree Week! Listen to our highly-anticipated episode focused on the nostalgic and controversial Shel Silverstein book, THE GIVING TREE, which has been questioned by many since its premiere 60 years ago.

In this episode, we share a brand new audio narrative written by playwright, actor, and advocate Jamie Roach, who felt compelled to examine, explore, and celebrate the classic book by continuing the story where the original leaves off. Join us to listen to this beautiful, thought-provoking, and new story!

The actors include Laurine Towler and Richard Brundage with Jamie Roach as Narrator. Music, Sound Design and Editing by Jonathan Zautner.

Robin Wall Kimmerer essay link: "Returning the Gift".

This week’s episode was recorded and produced in Massachusetts on the native lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, Pennacook, Massa-adchu-es-et (Massachusett), and Pawtucket, and in Wisconsin on the lands of the Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi and Menomonee  people. Tree Speech is produced by Alight Theater, and produced and co-written by Jonathan Zautner who is also the sound editor and designer for this episode.

To learn more about our podcast and episodes, please visit ⁠⁠⁠treespeechpodcast.com⁠⁠⁠ and consider supporting us through our ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠ - every contribution supports our production, and we’ll be giving gifts of gratitude to patrons of all levels. Please also consider passing the word, and rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Every kind word helps. 

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20 MIN
Wise Trees with John Philip Newell
NOV 15, 2024
Wise Trees with John Philip Newell

Today’s guest, John Philip Newell, is an internationally acclaimed teacher, speaker, and author of several books, including Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, and his latest book entitled The Great Search, which examines the lives of several prophetic figures whose work and lives showed that to live in relation to what is deepest in us is to live in relation to the ground from which we and all things have come.


John Philip Newell is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of Earth and every human being.

In 2016 Newell began the Earth & Soul initiative and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland.

His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh and he has authored over fifteen books, including his award-winning publication, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, which was the 2022 Gold Winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Spirituality and Religious Thought of the West. His new book, also with HarperOne (and published in the UK by Wild Goose), is The Great Search (August 2024), in which he looks at the great spiritual yearnings of humanity today in the context of the decline of religion as we have known it.

Newell speaks of himself as ‘a wandering teacher’ following the ancient path of many lone teachers before him in the Celtic world, ‘wandering Scots’ (or scotus vagans as they were called) seeking the wellbeing of the world. He has been described as having ‘the heart of a Celtic bard and the mind of a Celtic scholar’, combining in his teachings the poetic and the intellectual, the head as well as the heart, and spiritual awareness as well as political and ecological concern. His writings have been translated into seven languages. In 2020 he relinquished his ordination as a minister of the Church of Scotland as no longer reflecting the heart of his belief in the sacredness of Earth and every human being. He continues, however, to see himself as ‘a grateful son of the Christian household’ seeking to be in relationship with the wisdom of humanity’s other great spiritual traditions.

To learn more about our podcast and episodes, please visit ⁠⁠treespeechpodcast.com⁠⁠ and consider supporting us through our ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠ - every contribution supports our production, and we’ll be giving gifts of gratitude to patrons of all levels. Please also consider passing the word, and rate and review us on Apple podcasts. Every kind word helps. 


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47 MIN
Spooky Trees: The Haunting Continues
OCT 30, 2024
Spooky Trees: The Haunting Continues

Gather round the campfire for a very special, supernatural episode. We have spooky, mysterious tree tales from around the world to get you into the halloween spirit! Listen now, if you dare!

Special thanks to Cheryl Mullings, Charles Linshaw, Corey Roberts, and Emerald Forcier for joining our episode today. Learn more about Cheryl at https://cherylmullings.workbooklive.com/, Charles at: https://www.charleslinshaw.com, Corey at https://coreymroberts.weebly.com, and Emerald at https://www.penobscotbayestate.com.

This week’s episode was recorded and produced in Massachusetts on the native lands of the Wabanaki Confederacy, Pennacook, Massa-adchu-es-et (Massachusett), and Pawtucket, in Wisconsin on the lands of the Ho-chunk, Potawatomi, and Menominee people, and in Maine on the lands of the Pernobscott tribes.

Tree Speech is produced, co-written and edited by Jonathan Zautner with Alight Theater Guild.


Learn more about the podcast at: www.treespeechpodcast.com, and IG: treespeechpodcast


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29 MIN