The Diary of Anne Frank

Dramatized by
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
Based on the Book, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl

Performed
July 14-17 and 20-24, 2004
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse

Production Staff

Director	Valerie Gehn
Scenic Designer	Anne Thompson
Costume Designer	Laura Lee Hanchar
Technical Director	Alexa Kreps
Lighting Designer	Jason Zanitsch
Stage Manager	Laura Cole
Apprentice Coordinator	William C. Mulberger

About the Show

The historical facts about the Frank family are few and well known. Mr. and Mrs. Frank were members of wealthy and aristocratic families in Frankfurt-an-Main who in 1933 fled from Germany to Amsterdam where their children, Anne and Margot, grew up speaking Dutch. On her eleventh birthday – June 12, 1942 – Anne received a diary for a present. A few days later, the Germans began rounding up all the Jews in Holland. The Franks went into hiding in the back rooms of an office building and warehouse behind Mr. Frank’s place of business. They were joined by another family, Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan and their son Peter, and a dentist named Dussel. For two years, these eight people lived in four small rooms and an attic, never venturing outside, living on inadequate food supplies smuggled into them by loyal Dutch friends. Their hopes soared in July 1944 when the Allies invaded Normandy, but soon after the Germans raided their secret Annex. Of the eight refugees, only Mr. Frank survived. Anne died in Belsen. Her diary was found by Dutch friends after the Gestapo raid.

The Diary of Anne Frank is the story of the intellectual, emotional, and physical growth of an adolescent girl living under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Though often precocious in her insights, Anne remains a normal little girl who collects pictures of movie stars, misses school and friends, and has the normal quota of high spirits. All the time she watched and recorded the often-unsatisfactory behavior of the grown-ups around her. Yet not even Anne herself goes uncriticized in her pages as she describes her progress to maturity.

There were times of celebration and times when she was scared by the sounds of the bombings outside. There were moments of despair, but there were few and not of long duration, for Anne Frank was naturally cheerful and courageous. It would be nice to say that the threat of the Holocaust brought out the best in others, but fear, lack of food, close living conditions, and simple boredom led more often than not to friction, recriminations, quarrels. And because Anne was wittier, more imaginative, more curious than the others, life was especially difficult for her.

In one of her late entries, Anne writes, “I must uphold my ideals for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.” The Nazis destroyed that time for Anne, but the time can and does come to those who read this truly extraordinary book and take it to heart.

Richard Gidez for SCCT
This first appeared in the July 1981 Boal Barn program

The Cast

(in order of appearance)

Otto Frank	Joe Krabill
Miep Gies	Ruth Belmonte
Mrs. Van Daan	Jackie Magness
Mr. Van Daan	David R. Piltz
Peter Van Daan	Justin Allen Pifer
Mrs. Frank	Suzanne Nora Ludovina
Margot Frank	Amanda Karl
Anne Frank	Julia Brasseur
Mr. Kraler	William Daniel Daup
Mr. Dussel	Mercer Bristow