Uproarious and tragic, four moments that put presence and absence, lack and desire, greed and spite into perspective. La Libre Belgique

In four wordless stories, we have fun with the gap between life and death. Les Inrockuptibles

In a world collapsing at accelerating speed, is there still a way out?

Timber, the latest work by the Belgian company Still Life, takes its title from the warning cry of a lumberjack just before a tree comes crashing down. The performance leads the audience into a forest built of metaphor, a place that reflects the precarious state of the world today. As our relationship with nature reaches a breaking point and the future grows clouded with fear, the company turns to absurdity as a way of confronting reality, shaping a contemporary fable that depicts a universe on the verge of collapse. The work urges us to rethink how we exist alongside the natural world and to recover a fundamental longing for shared survival.

Since its debut production Où les hommes mourraient encore, Still Life has repeatedly explored themes of death and fragility with sharp irony and dark humor. Following the 2024 hit Flesh, which quickly sold out and sparked passionate discussion among audiences, the company returns this year with Timber. This time, an endangered forest is brought onto the stage, revealing a humanity that turns a blind eye to crisis while still pursuing pleasure. Through scenes ranging from wildlife rehabilitation and wellness workshops to live-streamed picnic dates, the performance constructs a layered wilderness theater suspended between utopia and nightmare.

Timber combines striking visual imagery with wordless performance to confront the collective anxiety that defines human existence today. Dark humor becomes a lens through which we face our own precariousness, asking us to reconsider how we struggle, survive, and imagine between collapse and the possibility of hope.