Care of Trees by Elizabeth Spreen / E. Hunter Spreen
A couple meets and falls in love. She’s an architect with a father who is a land developer. He’s an environmental lawyer. The full cycle of their relationship is revealed through scenes, answering machine messages, snippets of film, sound and lighting effects.
A thrilling, heartbreaking and exquisite investigation of love and belief, Care of Trees asks what happens when your partner embarks upon...
A couple meets and falls in love. She’s an architect with a father who is a land developer. He’s an environmental lawyer. The full cycle of their relationship is revealed through scenes, answering machine messages, snippets of film, sound and lighting effects.
A thrilling, heartbreaking and exquisite investigation of love and belief, Care of Trees asks what happens when your partner embarks upon a path that you simply cannot follow and how do you care for something fragile and spectacular without understanding the rules?
Press:
In a more conventional story, characters can achieve something like redemption by serving as examples for others. Hans Christian Andersen's mermaid may dissolve into sea-foam at the end of her tale, but at least we've all learned to avoid consigning our voices to the neighborhood Sea Witch. Such lesson-learning is one of the benefits of inhabiting a fabulist realm, where every action carries a clear and lasting consequence. But that isn't the case with Daphne, and it isn't the case with Georgia. They've done nothing to deserve their fates; in their stories, the line connecting action to consequence simply doesn't exist. They deserve a storyteller more willing than Ovid to explore both the illogic and the permanence of their transformations.
Spreen is that kind of storyteller. In Care of Trees, she has created a tale that feels true to the experience of adulthood — which is to say that it's arbitrary and unjust, full of questions you never thought you'd ask, and none too generous with obvious answers. Somewhere out there, a laurel tree is nodding its approval. And this time she means it. - Chris Jensen, San Francisco Weekly
Elizabeth Hunter Spreen's daring new drama, Care of Trees, is what I call a "fearless" play. Its script takes audiences to unimaginable places in their minds while set designer Nina Ball provides the fluid landscape/mindscape required to support such a challenging emotional journey. The Shotgun Players' handsome multimedia production grabs audiences by the throat and takes them on one helluva challenging ride. - George Heymont, The Top 11 Events from San Francisco's 2011 Performances, Huffington Post, 2011