BLACK WOOD: WINTERBORN
2024
Created for the 2024 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, BLACK WOOD: WINTERBORN followed the success of BLACK WOOD, returning audiences to the forest for a standalone sequel that expanded the mythology of Gunnar Montana’s Witch Coven as winter took hold.
WINTERBORN invited audiences into a dark, frozen world of witches, rituals, and forbidden love. The deeper they traveled into the forest, the more unsettling the world became.
A slaughterhouse tucked among the trees became intimate seating for VIP guests. Surrounded by cauldrons, dried herbs, and skinned rabbits, guests sat at a table where dead performers suddenly emerged from within, gasping for air just inches away.
The forest held secrets of its own. At one point, every light went out and black light flooded the space, revealing symbols and ritual markings that had been hidden throughout the room all along.
The performance began with a transformation. A man plunged again and again into a pool of primordial black liquid before emerging reborn as a witch.
Later, an ancient wedding ritual turned something grotesque into something strangely beautiful. Performers danced with long ropes of intestines, weaving them around their bodies as they covered themselves in blood.
At the heart of WINTERBORN was a story of forbidden love. After a woodsman was captured and killed by the witches, the woman who loved him defied her coven and brought him back from the dead.
Eventually, the lovers were captured and brought before the Owl Goddess, who sentenced them to burn together at the stake. When the flames died down, their charred bodies remained onstage.
After the performance, the bodies stayed onstage, allowing audience members to step into the scene and take selfies alongside the smoldering lovers.
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The production pushed the physicality of Montana’s work into increasingly ambitious territory. Performers scaled towering aerial poles, suspended themselves overhead, and navigated bi-level catwalk systems high above the audience.
Broad Street Review praised the production’s ambitious physical performances and its movement between “the beautiful and the grotesque,” specifically recognizing the aerial and pole choreography.
No Proscenium called the forest a “marvelous aesthetic playground” and praised the attention given to the audience experience from the moment they entered, ultimately calling WINTERBORN “one of the good ones.”
Philadelphia Magazine included BLACK WOOD: WINTERBORN in its guide to the 2024 Philadelphia Fringe, describing Montana as one of the festival’s more exciting artists. The Philadelphia Inquirer later called the production a “gothic, witchy, and sensual drama.”
Originally scheduled for the September Fringe Festival, WINTERBORN extended through October, keeping the forest open through Halloween.
FUN FACT
During the Owl Goddess judgment ritual, buckets of blood poured from the ceiling, bathing the Goddess’s naked body. The stage blood was made from dyed chocolate syrup, creating an unexpected problem: the entire room smelled like dessert. To mask the scent, five incense stations burning cedar, cinnamon sticks, and orange peels were incorporated directly into the choreography, with dancers moving around the burning stations and fueling the fires to overpower the scent of chocolate in the air. What began as a practical solution became an integral part of the ceremony itself.
