GREENFIELD — The set pieces for Greenfield-Central Drama’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” are strewn around the stage waiting for rooms to inhabit: an old steamer’s trunk, a faded oriental rug, an afghan, a floor lamp.
When the set is finished, these items will find a place in the recreation of the Annex, the secret room where the young Jewish girl Anne Frank, her family and four others went into hiding to avoid being arrested by the Nazis.
This dark but true story, based on the diary kept by 14-year-old Anne Frank, chronicles two years of hiding above a warehouse in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The play begins with the Franks’ and the Van Daans’ arrival in the Annex and ends as they leave their hiding place.
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Drama director Carolyn Voigt had originally planned on doing a comedy, but after a year and a half at the helm of the Greenfield-Central Drama Departmen, she found her students felt they were ready for something more — a drama. Voigt agreed.
She spent a couple of weeks binge-reading a number of scripts. None of them felt right, until she read the most recent adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Voigt remembered seeing the play as a teenager, but this newest version, written by Wendy Kesselman, was 30 minutes shorter than the original and contained fewer scene breaks.
Voigt loved the way the story was told. Artistically, she had been looking for a way to avoid blackouts, typically used in theater to denote the passage of time or a change of scene.
“Blackouts halt the momentum of the show,” Voigt said.
“As soon as the lights go up, I want the audience to be with the Franks and the Van Daans in the Annex every step of the way and feel what it would have been like to go from laughter and genuine happiness to silence and horror in another minute, fearing someone below might have heard them.”
Voigt also appreciated the script’s use of voiceovers; pre-recorded sections of Anne reading aloud from her diary were another way to create transitions from one scene to another.
A huge set spreads itself across the entire stage and onto an adjacent floor-level platform stage right.
Dennis Cole, assistant director of theater, is in charge of set design and construction. Cole pointed out various rooms of the Frank family’s annex. Center stage is the kitchen and dining area; on the right is the room Anne shared first with her sister Margo and later with Dr. Dussel, the dentist; on the left and up above is the bedroom the Franks shared with Margo; above and behind the living area is the room shared by the Van Daans and their teenage son Peter.
Eight people lived in four rooms, plus an attic, totaling less than 500 square feet. Space, and privacy, became a problem as the novelty of being in hiding soon wore off, and tensions increased. The Franks, the Van Daans and Dussel shared the space for 25 months, from July 1942 until August 1944.
Voigt and Cole hope the shared experience of working on the show is having an impact on students. A video tour of the Annex, now an Amsterdam museum, and YouTube interviews with Holocaust survivors as well as footage from the concentration camps have all been a part of the experience of understanding and presenting the show.
Voigt spends time talking with her young actors about the emotions behind the dialogue. She asks students what the characters might be feeling, and then encourages them to draw upon a time in their own lives when they might have felt the same.
“It’s a huge challenge to be these characters that have had life experiences they (the students) can’t begin to understand,” Voigt said.
As Dr. Dussel, senior Dean Camacho, works on personalization.
“I’m trying to make sure he stays Mr. Dussel without throwing my own flair into it too much,” Camacho said.
Sophomore Kaya Billman plays Petronella Van Daan, one of the more challenging characters in the play due to her portrayal as selfish and self-centered. Petronella arrives at the Annex flaunting a fur coat and later shows her true colors when it becomes necessary to sell the coat to buy food.
“I’ve always found immature adults kind of fascinating,” Billman said of Petronella.
“She becomes less materialistic as the play goes on,” Billman added. “It’s kind of tragic, because she finally values what matters most right at the end.”
Voigt’s hope is that the audience is tuned in emotionally from beginning to end.
“’It’s full of ups and downs,” Voigt said. “‘Anne Frank’ is a powerful show about love, longing, and loss.”
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Greenfield-Central Drama presents "The Diary of Anne Frank"
Feb. 1 and 2 at 7 p.m.; Feb. 3 at 2 p.m.
Greenfield-Central Auditorium
810 N. Broadway
Tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students
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