When Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s artistic director Eric Rosen heard about the three people gunned down here on Jewish campuses by a white supremacist in April 2014, he knew he had to bring “The Diary of Anne Frank” to the stage.
“I had always wanted to do it and when that happened and we recognized a very real threat of anti-Semitism in our own community, it felt like a response that needed to be made,” he explains. “My first concern was bringing the kind of artistic credibility and meaningfulness that the Rep provides to a story that is emblematic of a belief that ‘never again’ could be now.”
“The Diary of Anne Frank” will be at Spencer Theatre Jan. 29 through Feb. 21 (see box for details). In this stand-alone production playing only at the Rep, nearly the entire cast is local, with the exception of Chicago native Rachel Shapiro (Anne Frank) and New Yorker Lenny Wolpe (Otto Frank).
Rosen says the kind of fear and awe we feel watching the play is not much different than the way we felt that day in April.
“We’re astounded something like that could happen here — it can’t happen here. The power of theater is to look at what has happened and what could happen,” he says.
While the play has been updated to a more contemporary look and feel, its purpose is both historical education and awareness, and a sense of who we are now compared to who we were then and seeing that “never again” is not guaranteed.
“What the director is doing is making the lives of the people seem as normal as possible and they contrast that with a really heightened theatricality to remind us of history,” Rosen says.
Written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman from the book and directed by Marissa Wolf, everything possible has been done to bring attention to the history of the Holocaust, to restore that urgency of remembering. So for young people who may not know anything about Anne Frank or the Holocaust, they will after seeing the play.
“For me, it’s to restore a moral imperative in how we view the world’s current crises,” says Rosen. “We started thinking about the anti-Semitic rampage (at the Jewish campuses) and since we decided to do the play, the humanitarian crisis in Syria erupted and Donald Trump erupted and it shows we’re living in a world that’s not very different in a lot of ways.
“It reminds us that vigilance and moral action are our obligation as Jewish people and as humans — and not just for Israel and not just for people like us, but for any humans caught in the terrible struggle of fascism.”
But Rosen says don’t think of the play as a downer — it’s a beautiful story.
In typical teenage fashion, Anne goes from believing life is beautiful to life is so annoying. She’s maddening and very much the little sister that she is. Rosen says this is different than other versions he’s seen. These people were not saints; they were just trying to live and were among millions and millions of people who died.
“What the diary illuminates is the paradox of the purity of hope in a sea of despair that we hold onto and cling to, a hope and a belief in goodness,” he maintains. “And the show is actually funny, surprisingly funny.”
He continued to explain that there’s this group of people dealing with an impossible situation, fighting and living out their lives in a way that’s familiar to all of us. They’re just like us, reacting the way anyone would react, which is very human.
“They’re not suffering victims; they’re humans trying to survive,” Rosen says.
Newly discovered writings that Otto Frank initially left out of the original book have become part of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play. There’s content about Anne’s curiosity about her sexuality, her body, about boys and her rage at her mother. When the revised edition came out, it landed on many banned book lists at schools.
Rosen says that’s appalling
“The urge to try to sanitize a life that was so critically important is becoming emblematic of an entire movement of history,” he says. “It makes absolutely no sense to me that high school students aren’t having the same exact feelings and wouldn’t be comforted by a voice like Anne Frank’s — to know that someone from a different location and time could articulate just exactly how they feel.”
Rosen added that this version of the play with its contemporary feel, and the new additions, bring the people who lived it to life and make the audience feel that Anne and her family could be us.
“That’s the truth of Anne Frank — we get to imagine ourselves in her company and without any sense of foreshadowing; you lose a sense of what’s going to happen, even though you know what’s going to happen,” says Rosen.
He says that’s the difference between seeing a play versus reading it — you suspend disbelief when you watch a play. “You believe for a while that the actor is Anne Frank or Otto Frank. Then when something really horrifying in the last five minutes happens, you’re kind of surprised.
“I think it’s really important to remember that just like we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day, the Franks had no idea what was coming,” Rosen continues. “And to them going into hiding for a few days or a few weeks seemed like a very rational thing to do. When people say why didn’t they run away, why didn’t they escape, it suggests they should have known … should have had some access to the future that we just don’t have.”
Rosen says he thinks a lot about the three people killed in those parking lots in 2014 and the fact that none of them were Jewish reminds him that some of the noblest characters in the world of Anne Frank are the non-Jewish characters who are helping them.
“The problem is not a Jewish problem; the Holocaust is something that happened to all of us in a way that we all are impacted by and have to fight against,” he says.
Highlights for ‘Diary of Anne Frank’
“The Diary of Anne Frank” will run from Jan. 20 through Feb. 21 at Spencer Theatre on the UMKC Campus, 4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, Missouri. For ticket information go to http://ticketing.kcrep.org.
Be sure to see The Anne Frank Center’s exhibition entitled “Anne Frank: A History for Today” before or after viewing the play. This specially-designed traveling exhibit educates visitors of all ages about the dangerous consequences of intolerance to all communities. It will be on display in the Spencer Theatre lobby throughout the run of the play.
Thirty minutes prior to every preview and weekend performance, there will be a free pre-show conversation with the artistic staff.
Following the 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3, performance, meet the creative team.
A Scholars’ Forum will follow the 2 p.m. performance on Saturday, Feb. 13.
An Actors’ Forum will follow the 2 p.m. performance on Sunday, Feb. 14, and the 7 p.m. performance on Wednesday, Feb. 17.
