We practitioners, theorists, educators, and audience in the field of performing arts like to use the term field quite freely. As a sociological term, it denotes a network of unwritten professional contracts while at the same time evoking images of horizontality. Borrowing associations from the ecological term it shares its name with, the field conjures space, room for movement, transparency, where all actors have the potential to occupy as much space as their resources permit and the freedom to allow themselves whatever proximity or distance they desire from other actors and sub-fields.

The only problem with using the term field for the values of its eco-correlate is that the field of performing arts isn’t a field, but a forest.  

The forest denotes vertical, not horizontal growth. In it, the tallest bodies consume the majority of resources, while the majority of bodies struggle for visibility from below.

Unlike the field, the forest is rarely home to cultivated or homogenous growth, or to an even distribution of resources. The fact of this inequity promotes a cacophony of species, expressing a diverse set of roles and growth strategies, and structuring unique relationships to foster these strategies.  

Rather than being transparent and mostly flat, the forest is full of places to hide. It’s this cover, not exposure, which is crucial to generating a diversity of growth.

Despite our vertical image of the forest, the relationships between species, their communication and sharing of resources still happens underground.

A vast amount of the overall biomass of the forest grows invisibly, underground.

Vertical growth depends on subterranean growth.

Small species that grow horizontally, such as moss or lichen are crucial to the survival of even the tallest bodies.  

Growth in the forest is contingent on the ability to spread, not merely consume resources.  

Death and decay are vital resources.

But left to its own devices, or fed only the minimum resources deemed necessary for its survival, the forest will become increasingly less dynamic. It will stabilize but also homogenize. Undergrowth will thin out, and subterranean activity will slow down. A dense shelf will remain, of large, barely growing bodies competing for resources in a frantically static race to the top. In this case, it could be said that the forest again looks more like a field.