Anne Frank comes to life onstage
By Katherine Rini/ Contributing Writer
Issue date: 10/24/07 Section: University
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Audience members attending Rutgers' Theatre Company's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" next month will get a view into the life of a 13-year-old Jewish girl during the Holocaust.
But for some of the cast and crew, the experience is much more real than that.
Amy Saltz, the production director, described the experience of working on this play as amazing. She and the Mason Gross student-actors have really been saturated by the play - she described them as residing in Anne Frank's world - a world that is a frightening place to visit.
Saltz said this past summer she took a trip to the secret annex in Amsterdam where Frank resided for two years. She was able to look out her window and see what she saw.
"It is quite chilling and I think I will be forever haunted by what I saw and felt while I was there. I hope that the audience will experience some of what I experienced," Saltz said.
During World War II, Frank and her family of eight spent two years in hiding within a secret annex above an office building in Amsterdam. Crammed within this annex, they were hiding from the Nazis - fearing being sent to concentration camps, where they might face death.
But Frank does not only write about the devastating issues at hand in her diary - at the same time, she is also trying to cope with current issues that come with her age. She talks about the changes within her body as she goes through puberty, her fear and the boredom that comes from being isolated, as her life is being put on hold.
Anne Frank, in a diary entry dated May 3, 1944, questions, "Why, oh, why, can't people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction?"
"The question of how she, we or anyone finds the strength and courage to go on living, even to have a 'normal' life in extremely difficult circumstances, is one that challenges all of us at different times in our lives," Saltz said. "Sometimes it can be meaningful to see how others did it."
This play, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett in 1955, is based on Frank's diary, published in 1947 in Dutch under the title "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl." The diary was translated to English in 1952. It underwent a lot of attention in the media, receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, and received front-page reviews.
But for some of the cast and crew, the experience is much more real than that.
Amy Saltz, the production director, described the experience of working on this play as amazing. She and the Mason Gross student-actors have really been saturated by the play - she described them as residing in Anne Frank's world - a world that is a frightening place to visit.
Saltz said this past summer she took a trip to the secret annex in Amsterdam where Frank resided for two years. She was able to look out her window and see what she saw.
"It is quite chilling and I think I will be forever haunted by what I saw and felt while I was there. I hope that the audience will experience some of what I experienced," Saltz said.
During World War II, Frank and her family of eight spent two years in hiding within a secret annex above an office building in Amsterdam. Crammed within this annex, they were hiding from the Nazis - fearing being sent to concentration camps, where they might face death.
But Frank does not only write about the devastating issues at hand in her diary - at the same time, she is also trying to cope with current issues that come with her age. She talks about the changes within her body as she goes through puberty, her fear and the boredom that comes from being isolated, as her life is being put on hold.
Anne Frank, in a diary entry dated May 3, 1944, questions, "Why, oh, why, can't people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction?"
"The question of how she, we or anyone finds the strength and courage to go on living, even to have a 'normal' life in extremely difficult circumstances, is one that challenges all of us at different times in our lives," Saltz said. "Sometimes it can be meaningful to see how others did it."
This play, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett in 1955, is based on Frank's diary, published in 1947 in Dutch under the title "Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl." The diary was translated to English in 1952. It underwent a lot of attention in the media, receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, and received front-page reviews.