The Emerson Theater Collaborative will return to Brady Hall at the Verde Valley School with Mindy Mendelsohn’s performance of the one-woman-show “2.5 Minute Ride,” directed by Dev Ross, with three performances on Friday, March 22, at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 23, at 7 p.m., and Sunday, March 24, at 2 p.m.

The play is based on Tony Award winner Lisa Kron’s autobiographical history of the Kron family.

“The play switches back and forth between Kron’s journey to the Auschwitz [concentration camp in Poland] with her septuagenarian father [Walter], a Holocaust survivor; her Michigan family’s annual pilgrimage to a Sandusky, Ohio, amusement park; and her brother’s marriage to his internet bride,” the press release for the show stated. “‘2.5 Minute Ride’ is a love letter. A love letter to family and to memories that bind us and both demolish and lift us up.”

Walter, a Jew born in Germany, would go from attending school with classmates in Hitler Youth uniforms to escaping the country as a teen through the Kindertransport program, a British effort to rescue some 10,000 children from Nazioccupied territories. Walter eventually arrived in the United States at age 15 and returned to Europe after being drafted by the U.S. Army as an interrogator, when he was sent back to Germany to interrogate Nazi war criminals.

One of Walter’s memories that the play incorporates is his experience of being one of only two children in a classroom growing up not wearing a Hitler Youth uniform, which was not an option for Walter, whereas the other boy refused to wear it.

“He told the story repeatedly to his kids was, ‘I was so fortunate being a Jew,’” Mendelsohn said. “‘I didn’t have to make that choice, and I always wonder if I wasn’t born a Jew, would I have the courage to make that choice?’”

Mendelsohn’s own memories of growing up with Kron also informed the production. It is the first time in decades that she has done a solo show.

“The experience of knowing the people, even though these, the experiences she’s sharing here, with her father and her family, I never actually participated in any of these particular experiences,” Mendelsohn said. “But I have tons of other experiences with Lisa, or her younger brother, David. She graduated from Kalamazoo College [in Michigan], and then we were both back in Lansing for a couple of years. I had gone away to school in Chicago, and we were both back in Lansing, and we were in ‘Cabaret’ at Lansing Community College together. The experiences that she’s describing in the play, that are real, I was not there for any of those experiences. But there [are] other experiences from knowing her and her family that I feel profoundly connected to.”

The narrative tissue that connects the play’s three different settings is Kron’s relationship with her family, particularly her father, and how profoundly he influenced her life.

“‘2.5 Minute Ride’ sent me on my own journey of remembering family and family stories,” Ross said in a press release. “If I wasn’t laughing while reading it, I was crying. For me, this play isn’t just specific to Lisa Kron’s experience; it reaches out to us all because we all have painful memories, wonderful memories and some that are just downright hysterical.”

There will be a discussion following the performance that will allow people to reflect on how the play affected them.

“I just really want to do the show justice,” Mendelsohn said. “This is an incredibly nuanced piece. So putting myself out in a one-woman show. I find myself throwing myself in possibly more deeply than I ever have with a role. There is also an intensity to being onstage for about an hour and 15 minutes by yourself. There’s a certain stamina that it takes.”

Advance tickets are available online for $35 at emersontheatercollaborative.org. For more information, call (860) 705-9711.