That Play I Didn’t Want To Do

 

A number of years ago, our theater company had a proposal to do The Diary of Anne Frank. I was not wild about the idea myself. I felt it was depressing and everyone knows how it will end. What can I say, I like comedies. But the other board members felt it was a good idea, and I was not going to stand in the way.

We had two casting calls, one for the adults and one for the two girls in the play (Anne and her sister Margot). I got cast as Otto Frank (Anne’s father). I went to the casting call for the girls just to observe. I walked in the room to a plethora of little girls. I had no idea that so many girls in our community wanted to play Anne Frank. I don’t even know how many girls there were, 40? 50? I thought it would be difficult to choose one. But when one girl named Madeline read for the part, I thought to myself, that’s her, that’s Anne. I was not involved in selecting the cast, but I was not alone in my opinion about Madeline. Everybody thought she was perfect. And I have to say everybody who was cast in the play was perfect for their role. That is often not the case in community theater, but it was certainly true for this cast.

I quickly gained enthusiasm for the show. Everyone involved in the production was taking it very seriously. One of the things our director asked each of us to do was to read Anne’s Diary, which we all did. In addition, I reread a book I had read in college Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel.  This book detailed his life in a concentration camp. It is a book I think everyone should read.

We also had an opportunity to work with the artist Harley Gaber who was travelling an artistic installation around the country called Die Plage (The Plague) about the lead up to the war and the Holocaust. It would cost money to bring the Gaber work here. I wrote a grant proposal to the Collins Foundation that would partially fund our production and fully fund the art installation. The grant was successful. The Gaber installation was powerful. But it was so somber and sobering that our director decided she did not want people viewing it right before they went into the play. So, the installation was open to the public after the play performances and during the daytime, but not open for the hour before the play started. 

As the rehearsals progressed I think everyone started getting the feeling that this was going to be a special show. The “family” bonded. We wanted to make the audience feel the life in these characters. They were hiding from the NAZIs in a small, cramped space, and most of them were going to die, but we wanted to show the life. They laughed, they loved, they argued. For the three years in that small attic apartment, they lived. It was a life that was worth living. We wanted to capture that, the moments of joy. I think to a large part, we succeeded. When the actors playing NAZI soldiers broke into that apartment, there were audible gasps from the audience. They weren’t ready for it.

At the end of the play I, as Otto Frank, came out to give the final monologue. I told what happened after the capture to each member (Otto was the only one to survive). During the scene, pages from Anne Frank’s diary were projected onto the set behind me. Opening night as I began to give my monologue, I heard crying. It threw me a bit, but I was able to continue. The crying didn't happen just because of my monologue. It was because of the entirety of the play that led up to that moment. It was an emotional journey. It was easy for me to feel the emotions that I was supposed to be communicating, but this was something different. I have been in many plays over the years. Some of them were tragedies. But I had never actually heard people in the audience crying. The crying continued, and it happened every night. Sometimes it evolved to complete sobbing. I was not entirely sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, it is our jobs as artists to make people feel something, and it is an important story. On the other hand, you don’t want to hurt people. But it is an important story that needs to be told, and it needs to be felt.

An editorial in the local paper referred to our show as a “magnificent production.” I can only say that I have never been prouder to be in any cast than I was in that one.

Star Liner