Inspiring children through reading can be a challenge for educators. While there are kids who love sitting down with a good book to while away the hours, that’s not the case for all. With video games, TV and a myriad of alternate temptations, for some young readers, it takes a little more to bring literature to life.
That’s where the Bay Street Theatre comes in.
This week, the theatre kicks off “Literature Live!” a new educational program geared toward middle and high school students that virtually takes characters out of the pages of books and puts them on stage.
The program’s premiere production is Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s Pulitzer and Tony Award winning play “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The 1958 script is a stage adaptation of the book based on Anne Frank’s diary, which details the two years the Franks and another family hid in a cramped Amsterdam attic before being discovered by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps.
In 1945, months before the end of World War II, Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen Camp at the age of 15. But her diary, which was left behind in Amsterdam, survived, and “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” has become the best known book about the Holocaust of all time. It has long been a staple of middle school reading lists, and it’s a story that Bay Street’s Artistic Director Murphy Davis, who directed this production, recalls being moved by when he was a young man.
“When I was of middle school age, I became obsessed with the Holocaust,” says Davis. “I think it started with watching the film ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and after that I started to read things by people like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi all through my middle school to high school years. I don’t know what it was that drew me. It wasn’t the macabre, but more the astonishment of the struggle.”
“I think it’s also that adolescent age — going from child to adulthood — because the evil was so pronounced and so profound,” adds Davis. “It was stunning to me.”
Weekday performances of “The Diary of Anne Frank” began Monday at Bay Street Theatre and run through the end of next week. Schools from all over Long Island will bring students to Sag Harbor to see the production. Curriculums also went out in advance so students could study the material prior to the show. In addition to weekday shows, which are open to the public, Bay Street will offer two public Saturday performances at 7 p.m. on November 14 and 21.
Though he had seen the film version of Anne Frank years ago, Davis didn’t know the play well, and had never seen it performed live. In preparation for this production, he avoided watching the movie and cut out all stage directions from the script, instead encouraging the actors to discover the movement for themselves.
“I read the play and I thought, ‘What a beautiful piece of writing.’ But it’s also an incredibly affecting play,” says Davis. “It shows that even under the most dire circumstances, humans are still able to create family and society. Those are the things that actually outlast all death, all ages — the human spirit, the desire to survive, and the desire to connect.”
And though everyone knows how the story ends, Davis notes that the piece still moves audiences. It can be especially poignant for students who, like Anne, find themselves struggling with the tumultuous changes and emotions that adolescence brings.
“What resonates is the courage and humanity people were able to show each other,” says Davis. “They are not perfect. Anne was not perfect — she was a hellion going from adolescence to young womanhood. There’s a huge difference between a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old and she went through that with the constraints of not being able to flower and blossom out in society. That happens with eight people in an attic.”
Though Bay Street has offered educational programming in the past, including the successful young playwrights program, “Literature Live!” represents the first time in its 18 year history that the theatre has mounted a professional production specifically for a student audience.
“The reason we picked this play was, first, it’s an amazingly powerful piece of writing,” says Davis. “But it’s also what we’re working with — ‘Literature Live!’ — making sure we offer works of art that have been translated into a theatrical format and can be enhanced through live performance.”
“To bus schools in to see a full production — we think that’ll have a very positive effect,” notes Davis. “Often when kids are exposed to theater it’s in a school auditorium, the cafeteria, or the gym. With this, the kids are coming to an actual theater and seeing a top notch piece with real actors.”
With this production, Bay Street is also tapping into local professional talent — actors who live on Long Island or have access to housing in the area — an important consideration in keeping expenses down.
“That’s ideal,” says Davis. “But it still has to be who is the best for the part.”
This production is not only a first for Bay Street, it also marks a major milestone for one Sag Harbor actress — 16-year-old Elizabeth Oldak who appears in the title role as Anne Frank. Oldak, a junior at Pierson High School, has frequently appeared in school productions and at Bay Street Theatre with Stages, the children’s theater company, but with this role, has become a member of the Actors Equity Association, the union representing professional stage actors.
“I watched Liz grow up in Stages,” says Davis. “She came to an open audition and I asked if she’d be interested in playing Anne. A lot of people showed up, but she’s very right for the role. I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure working with her in her first professional role.”
Not only will Oldak and the actors at Bay Street bring the story of Anne Frank to life, so, too, will Werner Reich, a Smithtown resident and Holocaust survivor. Reich was on the 1945 death march from Auschwitz with Peter van Pels (referred to as van Daan in Anne’s diary), the young man whose family shared the Frank’s hiding place and who gave Anne her first kiss in the attic. Reich, who gives presentations at school all over Long Island, will speak as part of the Saturday performances at Bay Street.
“He’s a survivor with extraordinary stories to tell,” says Davis.
Reich is also in a good position to provide young people with a sense of what it was really like to live under that sense of uncertainty and fear that pervaded life during the Nazi regime.
“People’s ability to survive, change, learn and grow no matter the circumstances is amazing,” he adds. “Even though they can behave in abominable ways, they are also capable of the most amazing behavior in situations where they’re under stress. What happens in that room is a microcosm of society in a way.”
“The Diary of Anne Frank” runs weekdays at various times for school groups and Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. through November 21, 2009. All shows are open to the public and followed by a Q&A. Tickets are $10 and $15 and available by calling 725-9500.
Top: Elizabeth Oldak as Anne Frank listens to life through the floorboards of her attic hideout (gary mamy photo)
