On April 23, 2025, Idina Menzel, the Tony Award–winning actress and singer who currently stars in the Broadway musical Redwood, sat down with Stellene Volandes, our editor in chief, during the Hearst Eco-Conscious Living Summit.
Menzel doesn’t just star in the show—she helped create it. Redwood is based on the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a redwood tree for 738 days to prevent a logging company from chopping it down. In the play, Menzel’s character Jesse, who has experienced horrific loss, goes to the redwoods to test her survival instincts and escape.
A tree Jesse names Stella is the centerpiece of the play’s staging. To prepare for the show, Menzel went to the redwoods herself, and was able to climb one with the help of a guide. This hands-on experience helped her better understand how to interact with her Broadway tree-partner. “You leave the theater thinking about how nature makes you feel,” Volandes said, before asking Menzel how the trees made her feel.
“The redwoods have been through so much destruction and violence,” the actress responded. “They can inspire us and heal us within the canopy or cathedral of the redwood forest. Their roots are shallow, but they are interlocked with the other trees. Sometimes one will fall away for the others to survive, but they give new life to the trees and animals.”
Redwoods also have dead cells in their cores, known as heartwood—a fact Menzel finds especially symbolic: “We will never heal from some things, and that heartwood is okay, because it makes us better, and who we are.”
Watch the conversation and hear a few secrets about the show in the video above.
Watch all the discussions from the Hearst Eco-Conscious Living Summit HERE.
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