This 'Tree' Is Rooted In Memory

Extraordinary, the things that can happen when an artist is given a space and the liberty to create.

Dan VanHoozer was given use of the junk-filled warehouse of the Washington Shakespeare Company's Clark Street Playhouse, where he had worked on previous productions. He opened the giant metal doors to the place (home to old briefcases, airplane cable, wooden planks and broken chairs) and decided to build a tree.

"I walked in there and just saw a tree. . . . It was pretty much that simple," VanHoozer says as he prepares for the opening of what came of that vision: "The Tree Project," a 40-minute exposition on the mystery and meaning of memory. So, really, not that simple.

For weeks after the tree appeared to him, VanHoozer (a grant writer in his working life) kept returning to a photo he'd been given: his grandparents on their wedding day in Italy in the 1940s.

"It just hit me -- that's what it is. I want to know what [my grandfather's] memories are of that day, that day in particular. I want to know what it smelled like, how scared he was, what it was like to get married in uniform, who his best man was," VanHoozer recalls thinking.

The tree, he decided, would hold all the memories of mankind.

On and off for the next nine months, VanHoozer and a half-dozen collaborators who first teamed up for "The Pabst and Popcorn Hour Presents an Adaptation of the Tragedy of Doctor Faustus," a hit at last year's Capital Fringe Festival, brainstormed the piece into shape, talking about their most powerful memories and imagining those that marked the lives of their parents and their parents' parents.

Meanwhile, the tree grew out of the designs of artist Sean Hennessey and from objects belonging to the warehouse.

The result is a play about an Everywoman, who in death relives several memories (hers and her ancestors') as she wends her way through a mystical alternate universe to the tree at the center, where each remembrance will eventually rest.

Memories from each member of VanHoozer's group are represented, making the creation of the work as intimate as its topic. The team is hoping that for the production's final night (June 7), audience members will stay and share a slivered reflection of their own past.

"You can't match it. You can't match what people choose to remember," VanHoozer says. "You're talking about the essential elements of a human being."

The Tree Project Clark Street Playhouse, 601 S. Clark St., Arlington. 202-544-1960.http://www.treeinawarehouse.com. Through June 7. $5; $10 closing night. The Tree Project Clark Street Playhouse, 601 S. Clark St., Arlington. 202-544-1960.http://www.treeinawarehouse.com. Through June 7. $5; $10 closing night.