"Despite the Pandemic, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like 'Christmas Carol'"

 by Jerald Raymond Pierce

[For weeks now, I’ve been seeing television commercials for a solo performance of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol featuring Tony-winning actor Jefferson Mays channeling at least 50 characters.  As you’ll see from Jerald Raymond Pierce’s report “Despite the Pandemic, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like ‘Christmas Carol’” (American Theatre 3 Dec. 2020, https://www.americantheatre.org/2020/12/03/despite-the-pandemic-its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-christmas-carol/), posted below, Mays’s adaptation is just one of many renderings of the Dickens classic across the country during this pandemic-dominated holiday season. 

[(For more about Mays, see my report on “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder,” posted on Rick On Theater on 16 October 2014, and “The Front Page,” 16 November 2016; and the compilation “Jefferson Mays, Chameleonic Actor,” 31 October 2014.  AT also has a 2018 interview with Mays on his Dickensian production by Diep Tran, “Jefferson Mays Is Doing ‘A Christmas Carol,’ By Himself,” at https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/11/06/jefferson-mays-is-doing-a-christmas-carol-by-himself/.)

[Mays’s staging is a filmed version that began streaming worldwide beginning 28 November.  It was adapted by Mays and his wife Susan Lyons, and two-time Tony-nominee Michael Arden (Spring Awakening, Once On This Island), who also directed; Mays conceived the piece with Tony-nominee Dane Laffrey.  The production was filmed at New York City’s United Palace, a cultural and performing arts center in Washington Heights, and is based on the 2018 world première at Los Angeles’s Geffen Playhouse.

[At the time of his interview two years ago, long before the coronavirus made its devastating appearance, Mays declared:

I think [Christmas Carol] is probably the greatest secular humanist text ever written.  It’s particularly useful now to be reminded about things like charity and mercy and forbearance and benevolence and kindness and decency, and to ask the questions, “What makes a good life?  What is important in life?”  The basic human touchstones.  I think it’s useful to be reminded of them.

[How much more significant are all those issues now!  They apply not only while we’re suffering under the burdensome restrictions of COVID-19, but its threat to our health and lives—and, at the same time, we’re experiencing a rocky transition of political leadership that threatens our very governmental and social system. 

[That may be precisely why A Christmas Carol is such a popular holiday offering perennially—and why so many theaters around the country put in the often prodigious effort to bring the story to their audiences this year.  Here’s Pierce’s round-up of the innovative ways American theaters are meeting that perceived need.]

Amid the constraints of social distancing, perhaps more urgently because of them, many U.S. theatres are finding ways to bring audiences an annual dose of Dickens.

A tradition unlike any other. No, not the Masters, despite Jim Nantz’s claim to the trademarked phrase. Annually, theatres across the country mount renditions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a holiday production that can anchor a theatre financially, opening doors for bigger artistic risks in the rest of the season. But in the middle of a pandemic, when wallets are tight enough as it is, many theatres are keeping the tradition alive—less because of its potential box-office bounty than because, after nine months in a punishing pandemic, a story celebrating compassion and charity feels sorely needed. And after nearly a year of canceled performances, maintaining or reconstituting the connection between theatres and audiences doesn’t hurt either, even as some of the pain of this time is finding its way into some theatres’ adaptations.

“It’s a beloved tradition,” said Milwaukee Repertory Theater artistic director Mark Clements (he/him) of his theatre’s production, which brings in nearly 40,000 people annually. “People always call it a cash cow. It’s actually not as big of a cash cow as people think, but it’s an important stream of income. The tradition is very, very important in Milwaukee. It’s often the first live theatre experience outside of say children’s theatre that a lot of kids have access to.”

To keep Milwaukee Rep’s 46-year tradition of producing an Ebenezer Scrooge ghost story alive, the theatre had originally planned to present Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Tom Mula’s one-person adaptation, which follows Marley’s effort to redeem his former business partner, in front of a socially distanced live audience. But with the coronavirus showing no signs of slowing down, the theatre canceled live performances of the Clements-directed Mula adaptation, and did as many theatres have done this year: They shifted to a digital option.

The plan is now to record the Lee E. Ernst-starring one-person version of Carol. Clements, in an interview before the Thanksgiving holiday, joked that despite them being three weeks into rehearsal, he only ever saw Ernst’s eyes in the rehearsal room, due to mask safety measures. The production, which Clements said they were aiming at recording on stage on Dec. 5 with a soundscape from foley artist Dan Kazemi, will run Dec. 10-24 at $20 per household.

Milwaukee Rep is not alone in its need to cancel in-person plans, nor is it alone in offering a one-person adaptation in a year where human interaction onstage is more worrisome than jolly. In Staunton, Va., American Shakespeare Center was similarly faced with the reality of needing to cancel performances for an in-person audience [see my Rick On Theater reports on this company dated 18 and 21 Nov. 2009 and the NewsHour report posted on ROT on 18 Oct. 2020]. Their adjustment, though, has been to use a small ensemble who have been in a “work bubble” for a production that will stream live on Dec. 4 before being available on ASC’s streaming service BlkFrsTV.

The most notable of the one-person offerings is of course the version adapted by and starring Tony winner Jefferson Mays, which was released on Nov. 28 [see the ROT profile of Mays on 31 Oct. 2014]. With proceeds benefiting community and regional theatre impacted by COVID-19, theatres across the country have signed on to bring the production to their audiences, including Huntington Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Geffen Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, and more. 

For its part, Milwaukee Rep’s digital plans didn’t stop with the one Christmas Carol. As Clements explained, the theatre also wanted to make sure the show would be available for children, and to underrepresented areas of the city who would normally be able to see the production for free through Milwaukee Rep programming. So, through Dec. 24, Milwaukee Rep is offering its 2016 production of A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Clements, to view online for free for anyone looking for the large-cast iteration they know and love. 

Meanwhile, Writers Theatre in Glencoe, Ill., has also gone the double offering route with its Two Scrooges: A Christmas Carol, Two Ways. The first is a one-person show starring artistic director Michael Halberstam in his adaptation of A Christmas Carol, last seen onstage in 2008. The production, directed by Stanton Long, will run Dec. 8-Jan. 3, 2021, with tickets ranging $15-$50, depending on the number of viewers.

The second is a co-commissioned adaptation from Chicago’s Manual Cinema, Chicago’s acclaimed performance collective, known for their shadow puppetry and cinematic techniques. They don’t typically find themselves in a position to take on the classic Dickens tale, due to touring conflicts, according to Julia Miller (she/her), one of the company’s five co-artistic directors. This year, a combination of the constraints of the pandemic and the troupe’s love for The Muppet Christmas Carol opened the door for the company to try its hand, so to speak.

As Miller explained, Manual Cinema’s production has been created not to distract from the reality of pandemic limitations or shy away from Zoom fatigue, but to embrace the reality of how many families are gathering this year. Using Zoom as a frame, their undertaking follows the fictional Aunt Trudy as she attempts to perform A Christmas Carol, a task usually taken on by her partner, who died earlier in the year, over Zoom.

“We’re trying to speak directly to the fact that people can’t celebrate holidays this year together in the same way,” Miller explained. “She’s trying to carry on his memory and the tradition for the family, and then goes on her own Scrooge-like self-discovery of learning that family is important and connecting is important even though it’s not possible to do it in person. I hope people find a little comfort and a little connection through our adaptation of the show.”

Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, co-written by Miller and her co-artistic directors Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, and Kyle Vegter, with puppet design by Dir and Lizi Breit, is scheduled to run through Dec. 20, with ticket prices starting at $15. The production will be performed live from Manual Cinema’s studio, which posed a challenge for a group used to performing with five or six puppeteers and four or five musicians in close proximity. Working through safety procedures that include separating musicians from puppeteers from Aunt Trudy, each in their own individual corners of the space, Manual Cinema’s world premiere production will be presented all over the country through university and regional theatre co-commissioners and presenting partners.

Similarly not shying away from the Zoom realities of 2020 is Houston’s Alley Theatre, which is offering a virtual production of A Christmas Carol featuring actors who have filmed themselves in their homes with props, costumes, and equipment delivered to their door. This Doris Baizley adaptation follows a company of actors who, without their sets, attempt to tell a holiday story despite the circumstances. (The Cratchits [. . .] are all played by members of the same family, who’ve been “bubbling” together.)

As the situation evolved around the Alley’s production plans—seeing the anticipated Carol go from plans for socially distanced performances in a theatre to a virtual at-home reality—artistic director Rob Melrose (he/him) said the company worked with Baizley to adjust lines to adapt to the pandemic’s restrictions. Then, Melrose explained, managing director Dean Gladden had the idea to offer it as a free holiday gift to the Houston community and beyond.

“We already have 90,000 registrations for people to see it,” Melrose said in November. “It’s already going to be the most seen Alley production in our 74-year history.”

Additionally, Melrose said, this production is gearing up to be the Alley’s most accessible production in other ways, with subtitles translated into multiple languages. The free production will run Dec. 4-27. Melrose pointed out that one value of A Christmas Carol is that it asks and allows audience members to annually take stock in their lives and reflect on what they have.

“It’s a show that really makes you count your blessings and be grateful for the gift of life, the community you have, and the family you have around you,” said Melrose. “It makes sense why people come back to it year after year, and why it’s so particularly important this year.”

Many theatres are bringing that annual introspection directly into the home through digital offerings. Hartford Stage in Connecticut is bringing theatremakers and community neighbors together to create A Community Carol, to stream live for free on Dec. 17, followed by a four-day on-demand streaming period. Summoners Ensemble Theatre in New York City is working with the historic Merchant’s House Museum to stream a classic retelling of A Christmas Carol filmed in the storied city landmark. The Summoners Ensemble production will stream Dec. 18-24 for free, with a suggested donation of $30 for those able to give.

Those interested in something a little off the beaten path may be interested in People’s Light’s offering of A Christmas Carol in concert, featuring original music from Zak Berkman, carols, and readings from Dickens’ work, streaming Dec. 8-Jan. 3, 2021, with tickets starting at $25. Or, if extremely strapped for time but still jonesing for a holiday treat, NY Classical Theatre is presenting a reunion reading of A {15-Min!} Christmas Carol. Two actors, with the help of everything from puppets to wooden spoons, will tell the story of Scrooge, as adapted and directed by Stephen Burdman. The free production will stream Dec. 17-20. 

When artistic director Sarah Rasmussen (she/her) joined the McCarter Theatre Center in August, the conversation around Carol had already begun to shift away from in-person possibilities and to ideas of how the company could share the story with patrons at home. The thought of sharing the script for families to enjoy came up. But while some families might enjoy the DIY experience, the McCarter wondered if others would find the idea of having a full two-act play dropped in their laps during the holidays a bit overwhelming.

“I started to circle around the idea of an at-home ritual,” Rasmussen said, “where there’d be some abridged readings from this beloved story, but then also a way for people to engage with each other and really reflect on both the story and this extraordinarily challenging year.”

The result, Rasmussen explained, was to create something along the lines of A Christmas Carol meets a seder. The McCarter created gift boxes people could purchase that had abridged scripts, suggestions on doubling parts depending on the size of the family, and conversation cards that featured a Dickens quote on one side and a discussion prompt on the other. From there, families can allow their creativity to run wild with the story while simultaneously being able to reflect on meaningful questions.

“What we love about live performance is that something surprising can happen,” Rasmussen said. “I love the idea of people at home maybe seeing someone in their friends or family group acting who they wouldn’t expect to see acting, or hearing answers that might illuminate things about relationships. It’s really about gratitude and giving back to one’s community, and that feels very poignant in the winter of 2020.”

Rasmussen noted that not only have families bought these boxes for themselves, they’ve also had boxes shipped to family members so that far-flung relations can participate together over Zoom. The popularity of the McCarter’s A Christmas Carol @Home has resulted in a sell-out of available boxes by the early days of December. After all, Rasmussen said, in a year like this, many people are simply looking to create some sense of normalcy and a creative way to do that has been to find new ways to bring families together.

If a family is still itching to get out of the house for their dose of Dickens, some companies are turning to the drive-in for their winter tradition. In addition to its streaming option, American Shakespeare Center is offering a filmed performance as a drive-in movie presentation on Dec. 12 and Dec. 20 in Lexington, Va., and as a classic cinema experience through Visulite Cinemas Dec. 18-24. In Atlanta, Alliance Theatre has turned to the drive-in to present A Christmas Carol: The Live Radio Play, co-adapted by Leora Morris and Ben Coleman, with Morris directing. Staged for the first time as an interactive drive-in experience, the Alliance production will run Dec. 4-23, with tickets beginning at $50 per car.

Meanwhile, if it’s an aural Carol that will satisfy your holiday yearning, theatres across the country have that option at the ready too. Chicago’s Goodman Theatre is streaming Tom Creamer’s adaptation of the tale, directed by Jessica Thebus and featuring an all-Chicago cast, for free through Dec. 31. And San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater is streaming Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh’s adaptation, A Christmas Carol: On Air, Dec. 4-31 with tickets ranging from $40-60. Peter J. Kuo will direct.

The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is combining the urge to get out of the house with a unique audio experience, created by the Q Brothers Collective. A Walking Xmas Carol invites audience members to take a 21-stop stroll by window displays designed by PaintedBlack STL, a group that earlier this year worked with local Black artists to paint murals on boarded-up businesses. Artistic director Tom Ridgley (he/him) and company had also worked with PaintedBlack STL on A Late Summer Night’s Stroll, which featured curated archways, loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s midsummer tale, for participants to walk through.

“When we were looking ahead to the holidays,” Ridgely said, “we knew it was going to be a long, hard road, without so much of what makes that time of year festive, enjoyable, and even bearable. The holidays can be a rough time for folks. The same way it felt like people over the summer were hungering for something like that, it seemed like, what can we do that will give people a chance to get out in the distant presence of other people and experience something in real life?”

Of all the activities that can feel at least somewhat safe during COVID-19, Ridgely noted, taking walks has been one that has kept a lot of people sane. So, Ridgely, PaintedBlack STL, and company went about transforming vacant storefronts into a way to experience the beauty of A Christmas Carol. And having already worked with the Chicago-based Q Brothers on Dress the Part, the troupe’s take on Two Gentlemen of Verona, to start the year, Ridgley said they had already been discussing bringing the collective’s take on Dickens to St. Louis.

With an audio companion recorded by the Q Brothers serving as a story guide, participants have the opportunity to use QR codes placed at each window display and their phones to take a walking tour through a contemporary take on the holiday classic. The experience, running through Dec. 23, is free for all those who are interested.

There’s something comforting about a slew of Christmas Carol productions popping up throughout the country at this fraught time—something familiar and welcome. Perhaps it’s just the underlying longing for some sense of normalcy that theatrical traditions can provide. After all, companies across the country are also still finding ways to mount The Nutcracker, even if that means streaming it on the side of a building. But there’s still something grounding about A Christmas Carol that goes beyond the Tiny Tims and Scrooges who take the stage every year. It’s the gathering: of family, friends, and theatremakers around a story that begs us all to take stock of what we share while we have it. In a year where feeling distant is all too common, it’s refreshing to be able to come together a little closer, even virtually, around a common theme. Dickens bless us, everyone.

[Jerald Raymond Pierce is associate editor at American Theatre.  He studied acting at Ohio University and received his M.A. in arts journalism from Syracuse University.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), Pierce is also a freelance reviewer for the Chicago Tribune.]

Acting Class (On-Line Edition)

by Kirk Woodward

[The coronavirus and COVID-19 have changed almost everything about our lives.  In addition to their effect on our health and livelihoods, it has invaded the arts as well.  Just about every aspect of the arts, from both the perspective of consumers and the artists, has been affected.

[Perhaps one of the least known facets of art, particularly the performing arts, that has been disrupted are classes for the artists.  Since this is an ostensibly theater blog, I’m thinking specifically of acting classes. 

[Since actors and other performers no longer have productions on which they can work, and acting, in particular, is hard to do on your own—however unsatisfying, a writer can work at his craft by him- or herself and a musician can play at home, socially isolated from others—actors need some way to keep the instrument tuned, the skills from atrophying, the “art in yourself,” as Konstantin Stanislavsky put it, from drying up.

[So it’s no wonder that actors have turned to the Internet to seek out ways to test themselves and get feedback on their skills—to exercise the disused muscles.  So along came online acting classes.  I think they started, or at least they proliferated, pretty quickly after theaters, studios, and conservatories shut down.

[My friend Kirk Woodward, who I’d say is mostly a playwright and director, is also an occasional actor.  Susan Knight Carlin, an acquaintance of his who’s an actress and acting teacher sent out a notice that she was starting an online class, and Kirk signed up.  In “Acting Class (On-Line Edition),” he gives a day-by-day account of his participation in and preparation for the class, conducted on Zoom.  I’ll let Kirk tell the rest; he does an excellent job of it.

[One last word: I’ve chosen to post Kirk’s report now, following the profile of his former acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon, posted last Sunday, because he talks about working with her below and it seemed appropriate that this article come right after the one on Elizabeth.  (As it happens, Kirk also mentions my acting teacher, Carol Rosenfeld.  I’ll have some things to say about Carol and the work I did with her at the end of this post.)]

The computer application Zoom, originally designed primarily as a platform for virtual business meetings, continues to be used extensively by performers and performing groups during the time of social isolation required for fighting the COVID-19 virus. [See Rick On Theater posts “Theater Online – A Preliminary Report,” 19 May, and “The Diary of Anne Frank Online,” 29 May.]

For example, during the month of July I took an acting class on Zoom. It was organized and led by Susan Knight Carlin, a professional actor and teacher. I have mentioned Susan in this blog before, in connection with a production I directed (Spoon River in early 2020) [see “Presbyterian Avant Garde,” posted on ROT on 19 March 2020]. Susan, appropriately enough, announced the class by email, and eight of us eventually signed up for it.

This posting will be as much about the acting work as it will be about the medium (Zoom) used for the class, but I will draw a few conclusions on virtual acting classes at the end.

Susan told us that the class would consist of five sessions, the first one introductory, and would be based on the book Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen (1919-2004). This plan reassured me right away. I was familiar with the book, which was first published in 1973 by Macmillan Publishing Co. and is widely admired and used. (The book was reissued in 2008 by Wiley Publishing and is still in print; Wiley released an e-book version in 2009.)

Hagen was greatly respected as an actor. She won two Tony Awards for originating the roles of Georgie in The Country Girl (1950) by Clifford Odets (1906-1963) in 1951 and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) by Edward Albee (1928-2016) in 1963, and a Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1999.

A casualty of the “Hollywood Blacklist” because of her close association with the actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976), she and her second husband Herbert Berghof (1909-1990) co-founded the HB Studio in New York City, where she taught a remarkable number of well-known performers, as well as my own transformational acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon [see “‘Portrait of a Mentor’” by Alan Geller, reposted on ROT on 30 July].

I bought Respect for Acting when it was first published, read it, and have referred to it often since. The book contains ten activities often referred to collectively as “the object exercises,” the title of the chapter that describes them. They are designed so the actor can perform them either privately or with others watching. The word “object” points out that none of these are mime exercises; they call for using actual material items.

Although not all the names of the object exercises are self-explanatory, it still may be useful to list them, using Hagen’s names for them:

The Basic Object Exercise

Three Entrances

Immediacy

The Fourth Wall

Endowment

Talking to Yourself

Outdoors

Conditioning Forces

History

Character Action

The names of the exercises indicate that as a group they cover many of the things an actor does on stage. (I should note that Uta Hagen wrote another book, A Challenge for the Actor, published in 1991 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, also very fine, in which she provides a related but different group of ten exercises with the same purposes.)

Many acting teachers have organized classes based on these exercises, and Susan proposed to do the same. She suggested a five-session class. The first would be introductory; the second through fourth would use the first three of Hagen’s object exercises; and the last would be devoted to monologs

I said above that Susan’s plan for the class reassured me. Actually this is only partially true. For two years in the 1970’s I studied and applied the principles of the object exercises in technique classes at the HB Studio (not led by Elizabeth, whose classes were entirely scene study), and was an abject failure at them. Carol Rosenfeld, the instructor and a fine one, still teaching and well regarded in the profession, must have wondered what in the world I was doing there.

[The New York Times ran an article by Elisabeth Vincentelli called “Time for Your Close-Up” in the “Arts & Leisure” section on Sunday, 3 May.  It’s about online acting classes and one of the teachers who conducts such a class is Carol Rosenfeld of HB Studio.  The article is available on the Times website as “‘The World Goes Away’ and Other Lessons From Online Acting Class” at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/theater/acting-class-online-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=1.]

How did I manage to fail so badly? Some of it was due to simple lack of preparation; the object exercises aren’t improvisations. They require preparation and practice (like being in a play!), neither of which are my natural strong points.

Much of my procrastination was due to a feeling that I simply wasn’t very creative about the exercises. As well as I can remember, my ideas for what to do in the exercises (we had to come up with those ideas; Carol didn’t assign them) didn’t excite me, which meant they certainly wouldn’t have excited anybody else. Carol remained patient . . . .

So when I accepted Susan’s offer of a class, I also wrote her that object exercises were “the bane of my existence.” She refused to accept my statement, which I appreciate. I mailed her my check and the classes began on the last Tuesday night in June 2020, continuing through the following four Tuesday nights in July.

CLASS ONE – Our introductory first session began with Susan’s review of the first part of Respect for Acting, which she had asked us to read in advance, and quickly developed into a discussion of the mechanics of Zoom and the possible problems we would face.

I had wondered in particular what anyone would be able to see of an object exercise, considering the small size of a laptop camera. Susan pointed out, and Jennie Cherry, a class member, demonstrated, that with proper placement such a camera could show most of a good sized room, although of course it couldn’t do a variety of angles and distances without a second person moving it around.

In the course of this introductory session, I found insights into two things people often say about acting, both of which have always bothered me. The first goes something like this (I am not quoting anyone in particular): “We think we’re one person, but we’re really many different people. I’m one person when I’m with my spouse, another when I’m with my boss. I contain many different people.”

This kind of thinking seems to me simply not true. At its best it suggests that we can understand or perhaps put ourselves in the place of another person. At its worst, as a friend of mine has pointed out, it can be dangerous for an actor who is deeply neurotic (it can happen!) to think they have “no real self.” According to many accounts the actor Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was a classic example of this condition, and not a happy one.

The situation, at least for relatively healthy people, it seems to me, is, instead, that we respond in varying degrees to all sorts of conditions. An actor should be able to take in many kinds of circumstances, including – to name three obvious ones – the circumstances detailed by the script; those provided by the director; and those that arise from interaction with other actors in the scene or play.

In theory, at least, the better “receiver” should be the better “reactor” or responder, and many acting exercises, including Uta Hagen’s, are designed to make actors better “receivers” for that very reason.

This leads to a second insight concerning the well-known phrase “Acting is reacting,” which seems to me to be exactly half right. Acting is receiving and reacting. One can’t “react” in a vacuum. One needs to take in the stimuli first. Individuals differ in how and how much they do “receive.”

                                                                                         

A personal application: I am not a particularly good “receiver.” I have often said that I would make a poor witness in a court trial; I’m simply not a great observer. I’ve worked on this limitation over the years, with some improvement, I hope. I suspect the deficiency is a reason I never tried to act fulltime.

All the more reason to take another acting class! Here is Uta Hagen’s list of what “I have to know if I want to re-create . . . two minutes of experience:”

Who am I?

What time is it?

Where am I?

What surrounds me?

What are the given circumstances? (past, present, future, and the events)

What is my relationship (to events, characters, and things)

What do I want?

What’s in my way?

What do I do to get what I want?

And since I’ve made an issue of my preparation, here is a day-by-day account of my preparation for the first exercise (second class session), the “basic object exercise.”

The assignment of the first object exercise is to prepare a two minute slice of life in which you do something you do or might do in your regular life – not perform it, but simply do it. (I thought a requirement was that the exercise involve at least three objects, but I don’t see that Hagen mandates that, and Susan didn’t either.)

DAY ONE – found a monolog, Henry Drummond’s speech about the rocking horse he coveted as a child, from the play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee (1918-1994). Emailed Susan and told her what I’d selected, typed it out, and read it through once out loud.

Thought about what I might use for an object exercise. Tried to think what I do in my home office, where I usually work. Remembered the photo albums on one of the book shelves, thought that might fit the bill.

Experimented with the laptop to see if it could show the book shelves, my desk, and most of the room at once. Found that it could. Came up with a rough beginning outline of the exercise – take a photo album, find something and look at it, decide not to dwell on it, get another album, start sorting photos. Watched myself on the camera, which seemed to cover the space.

DAY TWO – Susan approved the monolog. Read it out loud again, trying to read it “neutrally” – to not force “line readings.” Decided that I’d use two photo albums, one that didn’t contain the pictures I thought it did (with pictures of my late wife Pat in various acting roles), and one family album. Tentative “want” or objective: to find a picture that a family member asked me for, of him in a play with Pat. Decided to let my subconscious work overnight.

DAY THREE – subconscious gave me orders. Situation became a letter from my aunt, asking for a picture of the family together. Made prop envelope and letter “from my aunt,” decided I’ll begin with bringing the mail into the office, read the letter, look in one album, find it interesting, put it back and get another album, start looking for the photo. I did the actions and timed them – took two minutes or so. Fine.

Read the monolog out loud again, as neutrally as possible. Realized it’s not “due” for a month. Wrote the nine “what I need to know” questions (see above) on the monolog, not consciously trying to answer them yet.

DAY FOUR – did the exercise again. It dawned on me that I really don’t have to “show” or “indicate” anything – just do it. Felt good about that. I like this exercise! Realized I need an ending – taking out a photo, putting the album back on the shelf. Planned to add that tomorrow.

Read the monolog out loud, and worked on learning the first section. Just two typed lines. How’s my memory these days? Worked more on answering those nine questions, using the information in the script and the fact that, my father and grandfather were lawyers, like Henry Drummond. 

DAY FIVE – object exercise again, adding the ending. Seemed fine. I love not having to “show” anything, but it’s still a temptation I have to consciously resist.

Worked on the first two sections of the monolog. As I divided it, there are six. Monologs aren’t “uninterrupted speech” – we just don’t hear the interruptions, which often come as thoughts or images. I’m trying to remember to make the images in the speech(es) real to myself.

DAY SIX – I was still finding it difficult to do the “object exercise” without trying to clue in my imaginary audience somehow as to what’s going on, like saying “Hmmm!” when I open the letter from my aunt.

Started memorizing the third section of the monolog. These are all short – not huge chunks of prose.

DAY SEVEN – time to try out the object exercise in the morning, so I set up the computer, started the camera recording, and did the exercise. Aside from my horror at seeing myself on camera (the words “old” and “fat” come to mind), to my amazement it was too short – 1:26 including turning the camera on and going to position, and I need two minutes. Changes: make sure not to rush; end by putting the photo album back, sitting at the desk, taking out paper, and beginning to write a letter to Aunt Emma.

Practicing the monolog, I tried to keep from being inaudible on words that begin or end phrases in the speech, and to make mental connections to help with the words I’m substituting other words for in my head. The originals are better. I realized today that the speech is pivotal for the play, because Drummond recognizes in it that for the sake of fighting for justice, he has abandoned the charm and lightness of his childhood.

CLASS TWO – after some preliminary discussion, we did the object exercises, one by one. Susan was supportive and enthusiastic; she asked two or three of us to repeat a section of the exercise using a “heightened circumstance.” For example, she asked me to become more absorbed in the first photo album I looked at, imagining that it contained, for example, pictures of Pat (which it actually did).

In requesting this, Susan put her finger on the weakest part of my exercise; redoing it strengthened it. It exasperated me not to have “nailed” the entire exercise the first time, but after all, that’s why we’re in class – to improve.

The session concluded with discussion of next week’s “three entrances” exercise, an “object exercise” in which we come into a room three times, each time coming in from a different experience which changes the way in which we enter.

I started immediately thinking about what kind of circumstances I could use for the new exercise. I decided I was returning to my home office after a day’s meeting with a possible publisher for several of my plays. One meeting would have been long and inconclusive, and I’d be exhausted; one would have been a failure, and I’d be furious; one would have been successful, and I’d be thrilled.

(WEEK TWO) DAY ONE – I found a “messenger bag” and put a folder and a script in it. I had decided overnight that I won’t be back from a publisher, but from someone who was interested in producing my play. I did the three entrances – tired, furious, and happy – pausing in the doorway each time before “entering,” and they all were great fun. I like this stuff! 

                                                          

Without trying too hard I was close to having the entire monolog basically memorized. It struck me now that Drummond is recalling his childhood incident for the first time in decades – he thought he’d forgotten it. That’s how it can bring back all the feelings it does. He’s lost something in the struggle, though, and he knows it.

DAY TWO – severe resistance to rehearsing the exercise at all, but I finally did it about 5 PM. To my surprise it was very different this time, and fun. It dawned on me that I might do it differently every time – I don’t have to repeat it. If you had already figured that out, well, I hadn’t, at least not that I’d noticed.

Monolog nearly memorized. If I let myself “remember” the events I’m talking about – let them come to mind as I’m trying to recall them – and visualize the images, it works, or at least it feels right.

DAY THREE – was I becoming too comfortable with the “three entrances?” The monolog was very close to memorized.

DAY FOUR – added a new bit or two to the exercise. I found I could be freer with it. Same for the monolog.

DAY FIVE – freer with the object exercise, somewhat less with the monolog, but I nearly had it memorized.

DAY SIX – changes continue in the “three entrances,” apparently organically. Monolog so-so.

DAY SEVEN – as before, I video-recorded the exercise to see if it fit in the camera, and to sneak a look at how I’m doing. Seemed all right, although I hated the way I look in profile! Monolog steady.

CLASS THREE – the class went well, and I was happy with my “three entrances” – I believe the first time I’ve ever felt good about any of the Uta Hagen exercises. Susan commented that she’d never seen me “mad” like that before. She emphasized how strong “previous circumstances” carry a scene forward, and the actor doesn’t have to worry about the audience “getting it” – the playwright will take care of that. 

At the end of the class, a brief review of the third exercise, hunting for a lost object, which Uta Hagen calls “Immediacy.” Here we go! 

DAY ONE – I decided that for the “Immediacy” exercise I’ll look for a missing check, because it’s something I can do in the office (and therefore in camera range), and because it actually happened. It would be funny if in the course of the exercise I actually found the missing check! I tried out the exercise and liked it.

I did the monolog closer to actual conditions – looking in the direction of the camera, “placing” the listener somewhere specific. (I have to work more on that.) I’ll do it sitting, since my character is exhausted after a brutally long day.

DAY TWO – trying to raise the stakes on trying to find the check. Only one mistake in the monolog.

DAY THREE – after doing the exercise, I wrote Susan to ask how long our segments should be. We could go on looking for the lost object forever (in actuality I never did find the check I was looking for). For the monolog I’m intensifying my character’s frustrations with the court system, which is leading to a more forceful delivery. 

DAY FOUR – Susan wrote the group in an email that we need to be sure we have high-pressure reasons for looking for the lost object in the Immediacy exercise, so I decided I needed to deposit the (lost) check so I can get the money into the bank to pay my city taxes. It seemed to work. Small imprecisions in the monolog, but it’s growing.

DAY FIVE – timed the Immediacy exercise – four minutes. Perfect. Found new significance in a line in the monolog.

DAY SIX – took the day off! Didn’t want to get stale . . . maybe . . . .

DAY SEVEN – did the Immediacy exercise with the computer camera on, to make sure it’s all visible to the class. Doing the monolog, I realized how much I’m thinking during it, on one level of my mind, about what the class, and in particular Susan, will think of it – how they’ll respond. A very bad element, which restricts what I’m doing.

CLASS FOUR – good results from the Immediacy exercise for the whole class, including me, and spectacularly for one member who actually did find her genuinely lost object during the class presentation.

“I wasn’t acting,” she said of that moment, and in a lot of ways that’s what Uta Hagen’s exercises try to accomplish – to bring actors to a point where they can behave on stage in ways that aren’t stagy. Ms. Hagen would endorse the famous advertising slogan “Just do it” as a model for how actors should approach a role. 

Looking ahead to the monologs in next week’s class, Susan advised us to think of the fact that our monologs will be on camera rather than on stage – they don’t have to “reach the rear balcony,” because there isn’t one on Zoom. It’ll be interesting to see how that works.

DAY ONE – no more exercises, only a monolog now. Nearly word perfect. I tried to let the remembering start much earlier – when I first mention “Golden Dancer,” the rocking horse I had as a child. Recalling is much richer than when just telling.

DAY TWO – monolog a little freer.

DAY THREE – okay, but I held back a little on the climax. Saving it for class?

DAY FOUR – a bit more adventurous. I felt ready to go on and perform it and see how it went. I thought I might even ask someone at home to listen to it – a big deal for me, since I prefer to do my floundering around in private.

DAY FIVE – a little more force to the ending of the monolog.

DAY SIX. I hadn’t found time for my son Craig to listen to the monolog, but today we found time. He liked it and seemed to feel I was communicating what I needed to.

DAY SEVEN – one more runthrough of the monolog. Go for it!

CLASS FIVE – at the beginning Susan mentioned that she usually begins classes and rehearsals with relaxation exercises, and she led a brief set of them, aimed particularly at unclenching the jaw and the vocal apparatus. All the monologs went well.

Jennie Cherry did a piece from the play Wit (by Margaret Edson, first performed in 1995) so well that I felt I didn't need to see the whole play. That’s quite a result. I can’t say I felt the same about mine, but I was happy with it.

                                                                                           

So what conclusions can we draw from doing an acting class on Zoom? Most obviously, we didn’t test working in pairs. In theory there’s no reason a scene with two actors shouldn’t succeed on Zoom, but it wouldn’t be the same as an in-person experience.

One issue would be the sound delay between computers that’s inevitable in Zoom events. Another would be a severe limitation on physical movement, which Zoom doesn’t handle well. Even small gestures on Zoom may create a feeling in the viewer akin to seasickness, and a scene with “blocking” – planned walks and actions – is likely out of the question. A pair of actors in a scene on Zoom, each actor working at a separate computer from a different location, would have to be “talking heads.”

Susan pointed out another aspect of the experience: acting on Zoom is literally “in your face” – a viewer can detect the slightest emotional shift, because the camera’s focus is so close. Typical acting class rooms are small, so actors seldom practice “projection” of voice in them; “projection” on Zoom is unthinkable.

The other side of that coin is that intimacy is part of the experience of acting, and Zoom encourages authenticity. I believe the participants of this class sensed that aspect of the medium, which I would say helped produce a high quality of work. How that result would transfer to the stage is another question, of course, but then we won’t be working on stage for a while.  

[In “Acting Class,” Kirk recounts that he took an acting technique class at HB Studio from Carol Rosenfeld before he connected with Elizabeth Dillon.  In his estimation, his work with Carol wasn’t satisfying, unlike his classes with Elizabeth.

[Acting technique classes are intended to teach the student actor the basics of acting by using exercises as well as scenes from plays, films, TV shows, and even novels and short stories.  The skills the actor learns in technique classes are what I think of as the basic building blocks of performing a scene before an audience.  Each teacher teaches the acting style of a particular system; Carol’s technique classes are focused on the acting skills stressed by Uta Hagen, who’d been her teacher.

[While the result of a technique class isn’t to solve a scene—the actor is learning or honing skills—scene study classes are where those skills are applied to acting problems—that is, scenes.  One, but more likely two actors prepare and present a scene, usually assigned by the teacher (though some teachers allow and even encourage the students to choose their own material), and are then critiqued by the teacher (and sometimes their classmates).  The scenes are reworked several times based on the feedback until the teacher feels the actors have solved the acting problem.

[Kirk also explains that Carol’s technique class made use of Uta Hagen’s Object Exercises as laid out in her book Respect for Acting.  I’m very familiar with the OE’s, mainly because I also took acting technique with Carol—as well as scene study—and stayed with her for several years. 

[I left HB in the fall of 1975 and enrolled in the newly established Master of Fine Arts theater program at Rutgers University’s School of Fine and Performing Arts, now the Mason Gross School of the Arts.  Carol was the head of the acting section in the MFA program.  I was at Rutgers for two years, 1975-77.

[While I was at Rutgers, I was appointed to a Teaching Assistantship, teaching undergraduate acting classes.  I adapted Carol’s technique curriculum, which, as I said, is based on Uta’s object exercises, and made it the foundation of my first-semester acting classes.  In the second semester, I moved onto scene study.

[While I was reading “Acting Class,” I thought of many things I wanted to say about the object exercises and my experiences with them in Carol’s classes, as well as in my own teaching.  I realize now that those remarks would be very extensive, making this a very long afterword.  I’m going to cut my thoughts down to one specific idea.

[Kirk allowed that his experiences with the OE’s hasn’t been good.  It sounded as if he’d changed his mind somewhat after successfully doing a few.  He said he hadn’t “exactly about the OE’s, but about my ability to do them.”  I told him I could tell him some very specific benefits I got from using them, practical lessons I learned.  That was part of why I used them as the basis for my own technique course.  I’ll relate one incident that illustrates what I mean.

[In my first year at Rutgers, I was cast in a university production of Anton Chekhov’s The Wood Demon.  It’s a large cast show, and the first scene is a huge meal served outdoors at one long table arranged near the front edge of the proscenium stage.  The actors were arrayed all around the table, but mostly on the upstage side.  Since this was 19th-century Russia in an upper-class family, the table was set formally; there were a lot of props, in other words, in a somewhat crowded setting.

[There were 11 people around the table, all of us eating and passing bowls, plates, and pitchers back and forth, handling utensils, napkins, and glasses.  As I said, a very proppy scene.  Now, when I did plays as a college student and an amateur in army productions, if anything went wrong with a prop I was supposed to handle—say it wasn’t in the right place on the set or it had tipped over, anything so that it wasn’t the way it was “supposed” to be, as we’d rehearsed it—I’d get nervous and flustered. 

[‘What if I screw up,’ I’d be thinking.  I’d lose focus and concentration for seconds.  I was in danger of dropping a line, maybe, or letting the audience see that I was out of the moment.  Well, you can be sure that in the organized chaos of this luncheon scene, that sort of thing was bound to occur—and it did from time to time during the run.  There was also a fair amount of improvised table conversation under the dialogue, just to add another potential distraction.

[Carol always came to see us in our productions and said a few words to us afterwards—not a critique like in class, as she might do during rehearsal or after the production was over.  The night she came to see Wood Demon, she said two things to me that I’ve never forgotten.  The second thing was that she was pleased to see that I was no longer showing my work on stage. 

[When I asked her why that was, she told me that my technique had now become integrated into my working process and was no longer a separate step on which I had to concentrate.  I couldn’t have been more proud of myself than if someone had just told me I’d become a father!

[The second thing she complimented me on was how engaged in the world of the play I was.  It dawned on me that I was no longer afraid of the props, so I could work in rehearsal on being in the scene with the other actors/characters., to be “receptive,” as Kirk put it.  I mentioned this to Carol—who’d been working with me by that time for about two years—and she pointed out that the work had been paying off.

[It wasn’t until much later, when I started doing Off-Off-Broadway shows with and for people I didn’t already know, that I saw that this confidence, if I can get away with that word, was a direct consequence of the Basic Object Exercise, the first one that Kirk describes above, and the work that led to in Carol’s classes and others I eventually took—not to mention rehearsals for actual productions. 

[The BOE is all about manipulating objects—there’s no more fundamental skill for an actor than handling and maneuvering objects—props.  It used to frighten me, and now it didn’t.  The BOE, the simplest of all acting exercises, showed me that it’s no different to handle objects on stage than it is in my living room, and if something’s out of place or askew—well, so what?  Just get it from where it sits, just like at home.  I do it all the time.  The only difference is, now someone’s watching me do it.  I still do it the same way.

[Earth shattering?  No.  But it had never entered my head—until someone made me see it.  And it made all the difference.  QED.]

'The Diary of Anne Frank' Online

[On 19 May, I published “Theater Online – A Preliminary Report” on Rick On Theater.  That was my collaboration with Kirk Woodward, a frequent contributor to ROT, reporting our impressions of putting on a live play-reading online.  In that post, I mentioned that after seeing Kirk's presentation, I watched an online performance of The Diary of Anne Frank and that I’d be blogging on it soon.  Well, now here’s my report on that experience.

[Social Dramatics, as Kirk and his group called their reading, was my first experience with any kind of online theater.  Anne Frank is my first full production of a play intended for virtual performance.  I have tried to cover this performance as a total theatrical event, though I am by no means technically proficient regarding IT and computers.  I have done my best, however, to describe my experience with Anne Frank both as a piece of drama and as a virtual production.]

My cousin Bill in New Jersey called me one afternoon in early May, just to check on how I’m doing here in the city during the coronavirus pandemic.  I mentioned that I had become occupied with my blog, trying to find material to fill the slots that would ordinarily be taken up with my play reports. 

With the closing of the theaters in mid-March, I was bereft of my staple topic for Rick On Theater.  I had several shows scheduled in May and June, plus some my theater companion and I were considering, all of which got cancelled, along with everything else.  Aside from being fodder for the blog (blodder?), I missed it.

I also mentioned that I had just watched a play-reading on Zoom (see my collaborative post with the playwright Kirk Woodward, “Theater Online – A Preliminary Report,” on 19 May), which had been my first experience with virtual theater on the ’Net.  The next thing I knew, Bill sent me an e-mail with a link to a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank online “because you clearly missed going to the theatre.”

I hadn’t heard about this production, described as “a special presentation created by artists in isolation,” but Bill reported, “This is supposed to be spectacular.”  So I began watching Anne Frank on Wednesday afternoon, 13 May.  It wasn’t what I expected (based, of course, on my vast experience with online performances, which now numbers three).

The background to this event is that the company, the Park Square Theatre, is in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the play was going to be presented on stage in a traditional production for audiences of over 12,000 middle and high school students (scheduled for 19-22 May). 

In other words, this Diary of Anne Frank wasn’t conceived as an online production.  (Park Square presented Anne Frank before, almost annually since the early 2000s; this was to have been its 21st staging.  Several members of this cast had been with the Park Square production for as much as 10 and even 20 years.)

The coronavirus pandemic scuttled those plans, but instead of abandoning the production, Ellen Fenster, the director, reimagined it with the technical assistance of Aaron Fiskradatz, a Twin Cities theater artist and “Zoom technologist.”  The cast had already been rehearsing their lines on Zoom, so the company simply transferred the entire show to the ’Net.

When it became clear that there was no way to assemble to record the staged version of The Diary of Anne Frank, the cast began rehearsing and recording a Zoom presentation of the play.  It was released on 21 April, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), and originally scheduled to cease streaming on 15 May; it was extended to 24 May because of the response.

There were two ways a viewer could watch the performance.  The video’s divided up into either two acts of five scenes each or 10 individual scenes.  I chose to watch The Diary of Anne Frank scene-by-scene because it was easier to make notes or check details between scenes that way and to cease my viewing session when I needed to.  Either way, the whole video performance is a little over two hours long.

When I was looking on the ’Net for information about this production, I found that Terry Teachout reviewed Park Square’s online performance in the Wall Street Journal.  It occurred to me that Park Square got something of a lagniappe from this happenstance: 

People all over the country—and beyond—got to see the work of this vibrant regional company and they even snared a review in a prestigious national paper, something they would surely not have gotten in Saint Paul. 

Teachout, in fact, acknowledged that Park Square was a “troupe new to me” and proceeded to praise the cast and the production to a national and even international readership.  He even called C. Michael-jon Pease, Park Square’s executive director, and congratulated the troupe, telling Pease: “You’ve got one hell of a company of artists.”

I won’t recount the plot of Anne Frank; I presume most readers are familiar with the 1955 play or the 1959 film adaptation.  (Those who aren’t can easily look the play up in Wikipedia or the movie, which has the same plot, on either IMDb or Wikipedia.)  Both are adapted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett from the book The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. 

Like the diary, the play is an account of the lives of the Frank and Van Daan families and Mr. Dussel, Jews of Amsterdam, Holland, after they went into hiding in an attic above Otto Frank’s former business premises from July 1942 until their discovery and arrest by the Nazi Green Police in August 1944.

(In her diary, which the budding writer revised and edited in May 1944 for potential publication, Anne made changes from her original version, written strictly for herself.  Among other alterations, the diarist had given some characters pseudonyms and the play—and my account here—follows the diary. 

(The real names and histories of the Van Daans, Mr. Dussel, and Mr. Kraler are known, but they play no role in the conception and performance of the play.  Curious readers can easily look them up.)

The Franks were German Jews and after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor (prime minister) of Germany in 1933, they fled to Amsterdam where Otto had been invited to manage a branch of the company for which he worked.  Then the German army occupied the Netherlands in May 1940 and the Franks were trapped. 

When the Gestapo and the Green Police—so called because of the color of their uniforms, this was the Nazi force with the task of policing the civilian populations of the German-occupied countries—started rounding up Dutch Jews, Otto Frank (portrayed in the Park Square production by Michael Paul Levin) prepared the three-story attic as a hide-away.  

The door to the stairway up to the attic—known as the Secret Annex in the Dutch edition of Anne’s diary—was disguised as a bookcase; it was only opened after all the workers of the company had left the building.  On 6 July 1942, Frank; his wife, Edith (Laurie Flanigan Hegge); and their daughters, 16-year-old Margot (Eva Gemlo) and 13-tear-old Anne (Sulia Rose Altenberg), moved into the hiding place. 

The Franks were accompanied by another Jewish family, the Van Daans.  Hans Van Daan (Jon Andrew Hegge) was Otto Frank’s business associate; he came with his wife, Petronella (Julie Ann Nevill), and their son Peter (Ryan London Levin), also 16.  Peter had brought his cat, Mouschi.  A few months later, the two families were joined by a dentist, Albert Dussel (Charles Fraser), who was in trouble and had no place to hide.

In the play, Otto Frank gives his youngest daughter a blank book when they arrive at the Secret Annex; in reality, he’d given it to her on her 13th birthday, 12 June 1942.  In either case, Anne began using it as a diary right away.  The famous book, which survived the war, was covered in red-and-white checkered fabric and had a little lock on the front.  (Poignantly, the diary Altenberg used in the performance matches this description.)

Since the office below the attic was still in operation during the day, the secret occupants above had to maintain strict silence and other restrictions.  Their needs were looked after by two trusted employees, Miep Gies (Sarah Broude) and Mr. Kraler (Jim Pounds). 

On 4 August 1944, the Green Police raided the attic and its occupants were arrested and taken away to various concentration camps.  Anne ended up in Bergen-Belsen with Margot and the woman represented in the play by Mrs. Van Daan.  Edith Frank died of starvation in Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 1945 at 44; Margot died of typhus at 19 in March 1945 at Bergen-Belsen and Anne died soon after at the age of 15.  The real-life Mrs. Van Daan died in mid-April 1945 either at Theresienstadt concentration camp or on the way there; she would have been 44.

Of the men, Mr. Van Daan was murdered in the gas chamber shortly after arriving at Auschwitz in early October 1944; the first of the eight Secret Annex occupants to die, he was 46.  Peter died of an unrecorded illness at Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945; he was 18.  The real-life dentist represented as Mr. Dussel in the play died at 55 in December 1944 in Neuengamme concentration camp of “enterocolitis,” a catch-all term that covered, among other things, dysentery and cholera. 

Only Otto Frank survived.  He ended up at Auschwitz where in January 1945, he was liberated by Soviet troops.  He returned to Amsterdam where Miep gave him his daughter’s diary, which she had saved from the remains of the group’s belongings in the ransacked hideout.  He edited it and in June 1947, the first Dutch edition of the diary was issued under the title Het Achterhuis (“The Secret Annex”).

The English translation was published in both the United States and the United Kingdom in 1952 and became a best seller.  The diary’s been published in over 70 languages, including German and Chinese, and is still one of the most widely read books in the world. 

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of Anne Frank’s death, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition was published, restoring the entries which dealt with Anne’s feelings toward her family, her burgeoning womanhood, and her reflections on her Judaism and the Holocaust that Otto Frank and the original publishers had removed.

Otto Frank remarried in 1953 and moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he had relatives.  In 1963, he established the Anne Frank Fonds (fund) in Basel to promote the global distribution and use of The Diary of a Young Girl.  When the city of Amsterdam issued a demolition order for the building in which the Franks and the real-life counterparts of the Van Daans and Mr. Dussel had hidden for over two years, Frank and another of Miep’s helpers in the protection of the hiders started the Anne Frank Foundation in 1957 to preserve the site.  The foundation purchased the building in 1960 and it now operates as a museum and memorial.

Otto Frank died of lung cancer on 19 August 1980 in Basel.  He was 91 and was survived by his second wife (who died in London in 1998 at 93) and his stepdaughter (now 81 and an active speaker on her family’s experiences during the Holocaust).  There are no longer any blood relations of Otto Frank left living.

Miep Gies was remarkably not arrested when the Green Police raided the Secret Annex.  She survived the war to greet Otto Frank when he came back to try to locate members of his family.  She lived on to 100 years of age, dying in 2010.  She received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as Israel’s Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations, awarded to honor non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazi genocide. 

Mr. Kraler in the play is also a stand-in for a real person.  He was arrested with the Franks and the others and used as forced labor in the Netherlands until March 1945.  Among a large group of prisoners being marched to Germany when an Allied bombing raid raised confusion, he took the chance to escape. 

Making it back to Holland by April, he hid out until the country was liberated by the Allies in May 1945.  Widowed in 1952, he remarried and emigrated to Canada.  He, too, was awarded the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations and died at 89 in 1989 in Toronto.

The diary was adapted for the stage in 1955 by Goodrich (1890-1984) and Hackett (1900-95), opening at the Cort Theatre on Broadway on 5 October 1955.  Originally produced by Kermit Bloomgarden (1904-76) and directed by Garson Kanin (1912-99), The Diary of Anne Frank ran for 717 performances before it closed at the Ambassador Theatre (to which it had moved on 26 February 1957) on 22 June 1957.  It received the 1956 Tony Award for Best Play and four other nominations.  It also won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1956 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. 

Goodrich and Hackett adapted their play into a film script and in March 1959, Twentieth Century Fox released the movie version, produced and directed by George Stevens (1904-75).  In 1967, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired a TV movie based on the stage play and in 1980, 20th Century Fox Television made another television film for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC); both versions had star-studded casts.

A revision by playwright Wendy Kesselman (b. 1940) of the Goodrich and Hackett adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank was presented in October and November 1997 in Boston at the Colonial Theatre, directed by James Lapine (b. 1949).  It transferred to Broadway’s Music Box Theatre in December 1997, running for 221 regular performances and 15 previews.  The production was nominated for the 1998 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

In January 1987, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ran a four-part TV miniseries based on The Diary of a Young Girl.  The BBC broadcast another adaptation of the diary in January 2009 in five half-hour episodes.  (It was aired on the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] in the United States as part of its Masterpiece series in April 2010 as a single 100-minute broadcast.)

In 1968 Grigory Frid  (1915-2012) composed an operatic version of The Diary of Anne Frank.  The one-hour monodrama in 21 scenes for soprano and chamber orchestra was first performed at the All-Union House of Composers in Moscow in 1972.

Soon after the war, Meyer Levin (1905-81), a U.S. journalist serving as a war correspondent in Europe, read Anne Frank’s diary.  He’d been one of the first journalists to see the concentration camps as they were being liberated by the Allied forces and he was devastated by what he’d seen.  He couldn’t write about it—until he read Anne’s diary.  He actually wrote a dramatic adaptation of the book, but was beaten to the stage by Goodrich and Hackett.

He reconceived his play as a radio drama and on 18 September 1952, the eve of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), CBS radio broadcast Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.  (It was critically praised and the network rebroadcast it in November.)  On 14 September 2009, Jennifer Strome, who had rediscovered Levin’s radio script in 1999, produced a private, live performance of Levin’s radio play at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.  On 15 September 2012, Strome produced and directed a free on-demand podcast of the radio play to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its CBS broadcast in 1952.

The Diary of Anne Frank, in almost any of its forms, has become a perennial favorite among regional theaters, community groups, and college and high school drama programs.

First, let me say that the work by Park Square was excellent.  When I say it wasn’t what I expected, that’s not a criticism.  I was just surprised.

It wasn’t a full production in terms of staging.  There was no set or lighting; there were costumes and some props (both of which were scrounged from each actor’s home—though the costume bits all still looked period-correct).  There were even costume changes from scene to scene.

The actors, who all appeared from separate rooms in their homes, were seated.  (The video was recorded on Zoom, then edited and assembled—I’d guess by Fiskradatz.)  They each appeared in a box with a neutral background (each a different color) and there was no movement aside from hand or arm gestures and facial expressions.

It was halfway like a reading, except that the actors were wearing costumes and using some hand props—and the dialogue was memorized, not read from scripts.  Because there was no movement, the actors all read their stage directions, which was a little odd at first, since stage directions are written in third person.  Someone off camera read the general stage directions while the screen was black—which I found a little disconcerting because at first I thought maybe something was wrong with my computer or my connection.  (There wasn’t.)

As I noted, each actor was in a separate box and all the actors “on stage” were seen in gallery view.  As characters entered or exited, their boxes appeared or disappeared—and the other boxes rearranged themselves randomly.  Sometimes while a character was speaking and someone else entered or left, the box of the character talking popped into a new location.  I found this flustering because, while I could continue to hear the actor, it took me a second or two to find where the speaker reappeared.

There was only one instance when the actors left their boxes in view of the audience—that is, they didn’t turn off their cameras.  That was the final exit at the end of the play (“Our time here has come to an End,” act 2, scene 4), after the Germans raided the Secret Annex.  Each actor gathered her or his belongings and, starting with Mr. Frank, stood and walked out of the box in silence, one by one.  The empty boxes all remained until only Anne was left on screen. 

                                                              

Anne took out the red-and-white checked diary; the screen zoomed in on her box alone as she wrote her final entry, detailing the departure.  Then the screen returned to the view of Anne and the seven empty boxes as she gathered her things and exited.  The screen went black. 

A local reviewer—who’d previously seen a full production of Park Square’s Anne Frank—reported of this moment: “The last scenes of the play, watching each face as the reality of what is happening dawns, are even more gripping and dramatic than the stage version.”

It was one of the times in the presentation when the actors used the boxes as if they were not only their set, but their world.  Instead of looking toward the door on the stage set that would have been the entry point of the Green Police, they all looked around the perimeters of the their boxes, as if they were expecting the Germans to penetrate the virtual frames.

According to actor Ryan London Levin, this was the result of director Fenster’s guidance.  She had told her actors to imagine that their Zoom boxes were, indeed, their worlds—the way actors are often trained to see their stage environment.  When they heard a thief downstairs from the attic after working hours, they were directed to respond as if he might break into their boxes. 

Despite the small issue of not always finding the on-screen speaker, however, I found myself perhaps more engaged in the online performance than I sometimes have been at in-person shows.  As I reported in the article on online theater, there were reasons for this.

                                                                                            

Because the actors appeared in close-up one-shots, each in a separate window, there was little doubt most of the time who was speaking.  If the actor used facial expressions, I could see them very clearly.  Further, the actors all looked as if they were performing for me—as if I were the only spectator.  (In a live-theater performance I attended where that was literally true, I was very self-conscious.)  That made it hard to look away, even though I knew they couldn’t see me.

Not that there weren’t some technical glitches.  The audio and the visual images were out of synch occasionally; an actor’s speech sometimes didn’t match her or his lip movements.  The sound sometimes dropped out and the video froze once or twice. 

Since this is a Saint Paul company, I don’t know any of the artists—actors, director, or desigers.  According to the program—there’s a PDF of the original one intended for the stage performances—some of the actors are Equity members and some are not.  I’d say the production is the equivalent of a very good Off-Off-Broadway performance, maybe a baby Off-Broadway one.

The acting, which was close to readers’ theater, was quite good.  I’m pretty sure Sulia Rose Altenberg is several years older than Anne (for one thing, Altenberg’s played the role for a few years at Park Square), but she captures the 13-year-old’s childishness, her inquisitiveness, her precocity, her sense of humor convincingly.  Ryan London Levin personifies the diffidence and sensitivity of the teenager that’s Peter.

If I had to imagine an Otto Frank, I couldn’t have done better than Michael Paul Levin.  He was entirely convincing in his efforts as de facto pater familias to keep everyone in the attic on an even keel despite the horror of their situation, while at the same time his tenderness with Anne as she goes through not only the adjustment to their straits, but her transition from a little girl to a young woman. 

A note about the performance of Levin’s Otto: he used a pronounced German accent, while the Dutch characters spoke ordinary American English.  Laurie Flanigan Hegge’s Edith Frank also had a slight German accent (the vocal coach was Keely Wolter) and the two Frank adults both handled this credibly. We remember that the Franks were recent refugees from Germany whereas the other characters were either native-born Dutch or had been in the Netherlands for a long time. 

I assume the rationale for the Frank daughters not to have German accents is that they both came to Amsterdam as little children in 1933—Anne was four and Margot was seven—and had been going to Dutch schools.  I thought this was an excellent decision on the part of Fenster and well executed by the cast.

All the cast handled what could have become a collection of clichés behaving predictably gently and with heartfelt conviction.  Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan could have been played as one-note selfish, spoiled, and egotistical social-climbers, but Jon Andrew Hegge and Julie Ann Nevill found the sympathetic aspect of the characters despite their often cold behavior.

I was much impressed with some of the physicalizations the actors accomplished in spite of the restrictive environment of the online production.  They managed to make the few gestures they did seem coordinated with one another—as one actor reached out to hand some object to another, the second actor appeared to take it—even though the props themselves were different objects.

One remarkable example was a tug-o’-war Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan have with the woman’s beloved fur coat (“A New Year,” act 2, scene 1): Hegge and Nevill were each in his and her own Zoom box—but it really looked like they were pulling at opposite ends of the garment.

Part of this might have been the conviction by the actors that the few objects they used as props, as directed by Fenster, had been selected by the actors very carefully.  Ryan London Levin explained that the director had suggested they “find objects in our house to use as props . . . that are special for you.” 

Another accomplishment that touched me was the way the cast handled the Jewish customs in the play.  The main one is the celebration of Hanukkah (“Hanukkah in the Attic.” act 1, scene 5), with the lighting of the candles and Anne’s handing out small hand-made gifts, and then her singing “Oh, Hanukkah.” 

I have no idea how many of the cast are Jewish, but surely not all of them—yet they all made me feel like these were traditions they knew—except Charles Fraser’s Mr. Dussel, who’s character is clearly a secular Jew and doesn’t know his faith’s traditions, comparing Hanukkah to “Saint Nicholas Day.”  (The historical dentist was, in fact, a devout Jew.) 

Two other impressions: part of the hiders’ situation is very reminiscent of ours during the current pandemic—though far more dire, of course.  The theater’s own promotional material draws a parallel with “a country experiencing social isolation and anxiety about the future in unprecedented ways.”  The theater couldn’t have predicted this situation when they selected and scheduled Anne Frank (announced on 28 February 2020; Minnesota’s stay-at-home order didn’t take effect until 28 March), which is weird.  

I found watching this story emotionally hard.  I’m generally not good with Holocaust stories—I avoid movies on the subject—because it makes me really, really angry.  Knowing how this story ends—I read The Diary of a Young Girl when I was in middle school and I saw the 1959 film (which came out when I was 12)—makes it even harder.  This is not a play I’d have chosen to see in a theater.

The  Twin Cities reviewer in World magazine, a bi-weekly Christian news magazine published in Asheville, North Carolina, Sharon Dierberger, called the Park Square online production “the most creative and emotional rendition of The Diary of Anne Frank you may ever see.”  Dierberger observed that “Anne Frank’s hiding in the secret annex is particularly apropos considering the isolation today’s pandemic is causing around the world,” but admonished that “viewing it will leave you counting your blessings instead of your days without dining in a restaurant.”

The review-writer felt that “the personal nature of the players looking directly into the camera heightens the emotion of each line.”   She added:

The simplicity of the format and close-up expressions of each wonderfully well-cast actor are surprisingly effective.  I didn’t expect to be so drawn in, especially because I’d seen the actual play in the same theater years earlier.  That production was moving.  This was even better.

The Minnesota writer especially found that she “empathized with Anne’s adolescent ruminating and older-than-her-years philosophizing.”  She continued: “Sulia Rose Altenberg portrays Anne, and has found the right balance of innocence and angst.”

“Michael Paul Levin, playing Anne’s father, is believable as the patriarch trying to buoy up the attic occupants, maintain peace, love his family well, and remain ever-hopeful,” Dierberger wrote.  With respect to the whole ensemble, the World reviewer “could feel my own temperature rise watching family members struggle to get along in close quarters, share rations, and wait, wait, wait.”

The big PR coup for the Park Square Theatre was Terry Teachout’s Wall Street Journal review.  The WSJ reviewer labeled the theater’s production “the most stirring staging of ‘Anne Frank’ I have ever seen.”  He went on to elucidate that it was

a version that employs the unique properties of Zoom in a way that heightens the intrinsic drama of the play itself, subtly connecting the terrible truth of the Frank family’s desperate attempt to hide from the Nazis to the infinitely less consequential but still painful solitude in which so many of us find ourselves forced to live.

Teachout observed that the play “tells an emotionally overwhelming story with a simplicity that brings it within reach of just about any cast imaginable.”  Of the production, the WSJ review-writer reported: “It is acted by a very, very strong 10-person ensemble.” 

Further, he affirmed of “the play’s climax,” the scene of the hiders’ departure from the Secret Annex, “that Ms. Fenster and her ingenious colleagues have come up with what might well be the very first Zoom-based coup de théâtre, a scene of stunning intensity whose mere memory reduces me to tears as I write these words.”

“To watch Park Square’s ‘Anne Frank,’” declared Teachout, “is to be given an exciting preview of what Zoom will make possible for other theater companies who are capable of using it with comparable imagination.”  In conclusion, he added: “Rarely has a revival of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ been so timely.”