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Photos by Gary Mamay
In the autumn of 2008, the decision-making team at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor was looking for a way to revamp and expand the educational programs offered to high school and middle school students in the surrounding area.
There were a number of factors behind the perceived need to retool the programs. For starters, as the economy stalled and then dropped into a nosedive, financial constraints—always a challenge for the theater—started to put a tighter squeeze on all of Bay Street’s initiatives, and educational outreach had no special immunity.
Artistic directors Sybil Christopher and Murphy Davis and managing director for productions Gary Hygom all wanted to find a way to have educational programming “take advantage of what we do well,” Mr. Davis said in an interview at the theater last week, “which is putting on quality productions.”
Managing director for development Julie Fitzgerald and general manager Tracy Mitchell, meanwhile, wanted Bay Street’s educational programs to have a broader reach to school districts around Long Island, both for economic sustainability and to reflect the theater’s commitment, as expressed in its mission statement, to fostering “the continued value of theatre as a vital art form for future generations.”
Fast-forward to the present, when Bay Street’s new educational program, Literature Live! will be rolled out in its premiere production, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” starting on November 9 and running through November 21. The show will be presented on an irregular schedule on weekdays to accommodate school groups and on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. All shows are open to the public, as well as to groups from schools, churches and synagogues. Tickets are $10 and $15.
Sponsored in part by Target as part of the corporation’s effort to support “affordable family programming,” Literature Live! was developed with the aim of presenting full theatrical productions—replete with professional actors, sets, wardrobe and props—of literary works that fall within the core curriculum in schools and are also of interest to the public at large. All Literature Live! selections will serve as a launching point for discussion and further examination, with study guides offered to teachers prior to the performances and Q&A sessions following each show for students and adults.
For the first Literature Live! production, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a Holocaust survivor, Werner Reich of Smithtown, has agreed to talk to school groups after each show and to the general audience in talkbacks with Mr. Davis, who is directing this show, after the two Saturday night shows, November 14 and November 21.
According to Mr. Davis, the original idea, and the name for the program, came from Mr. Hygom on the basis of a suggestion from his wife, Mary, who is currently working in the Sound Beach School District and has extensive experience in high school dramatic arts programs.
Mr. Davis said the first show was selected because the Bay Street team knew that “The Diary of Anne Frank” was part of the New York State curriculum for middle schools. Other pieces that might fit the Literature Live! parameters, he said, would be the stage adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” or “The Belle of Amherst” for schools studying Emily Dickinson.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is a stage adaptation by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett of the original “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. The play, directed by Garson Kanin and starring Susan Strasberg in the role of Anne, opened on Broadway in October 1955 and ran for 717 performances, winning the Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
In December 1997, the play was revived at the Music Box Theatre in New York in a new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman, with Natalie Portman playing Anne and the East End’s own Harris Yulin in the role of Mr. Van Daan.
The play, which examines the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis during World War II in a concealed space above a warehouse, gives audiences an opportunity to feel their claustrophobic existence, their hopes, their fears and their will to survive in one very personalized example of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Because Bay Street is a professional theater, or what is known as an “Equity house,” the theater was obliged to cast the production using members of the Actors’ Equity labor union, working with a Theater for Young Audiences contract. One member of the cast, Liz Oldak, a Pierson High School student who has done a lot of work with Stages Children’s Theater Workshop, had to get her Equity card in order to play the role of Anne Frank in this show.
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