Page of the past: Cornell, Riverside Theatre join forces to stage ‘Anne Frank’

By Diana Nollen

Embodying the spirit of Anne Frank has been an emotional journey for student actress Natalie Kropf.

"Both of my grandparents were in the Holocaust,” says Kropf, 21, a junior majoring in theater at Cornell College in Mount Vernon. “My grandmother lived in Holland - in The Hague - and was about the same age as Anne.

“It's really brought me closer to my own personal history and made me curious to learn more about it,” Kropf says.

“It's such an important part of history. Our generation has grown up hearing about it from generations past. But the people who lived through it might not be here for the next generation. How are they going to hear about it, except from textbooks? They need to learn how it happened so it can never, ever, ever happen again.”

Kropf, of Wilton, Conn., is joining other Cornell students and professional actors from Riverside Theatre in Iowa City to stage “The Diary of Anne Frank.” They're using Wendy Kesselman's adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a group of Jews hiding from the Nazis in a secret upstairs annex in Amsterdam. The new version, produced on Broadway in 1997, restores some passages edited out of the diary by Anne's father, Otto Frank, who survived the Holocaust.

This production was staged at Cornell's Kimmel Theatre through Oct. 18, then moves to Riverside Theatre from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8.

“Anne in the original version was pretty much reduced to the universal notion of a peppy teenager,” says Mark Hunter of Iowa City, an associate professor of theater at Cornell and director of the show.

“The historical Anne Frank and the Anne Frank of this adaptation is an extraordinary young girl, a very careful observant and a brilliant prodigy as a writer,” he says.

“Not until the mid-90s were portions of the historical Anne Frank diaries restored, (including) comments about her own family - especially her mother - and attitudes about her own emerging sexuality and curiosity.

 “The Anne Frank depicted in this version is a much more fully dimensional, complex person closer to the historical figure.”

He says the new version also places more emphasis on the religious and historical context of this chapter of Anne's life.

“In the original production, done in the mid-1950s America, a real effort was made to universalize the story. It essentially scrubbed the characters of their Jewishness, people who were discriminated against,” Hunter says. “Wendy attempted to restore the Jewishness of these characters who were in hiding for one reason only - Jews were being slaughtered.

 “Last, in an attempt to create a theater piece palatable for the times, a tremendous emphasis was made to create a cheerful, upbeat dimension to the play. That does a tremendous disservice to the seriousness of the Holocaust. There's lots of humor and playfulness in the play, but in the end, seven of the eight people in hiding would perish. (This version) shows some of Anne's own consciousness, awareness and feelings about the larger political world in which she lived and died.”

And even though the story reflects the time and horrors of World War II, its themes are still relevant, Hunter says.

 “It speaks to today's audiences in a variety of ways,” he says. “It does speak to particular kinds of human events everyone can identify with, whether or not they've been a Jew in hiding in the 1940s. They can identify with fear, they can identify with living in close quarters and they can identify with the experience of trying to create a semblance of normal in extraordinary circumstances. “The characters are rich and complicated and involved in all kinds of dramas people can identify with. It's not only about the ultimate drama (of the Holocaust) but also about petty jealousies and a budding love affair. A lot of human experience is packed into the play. It's very powerful and intentionally entertaining in the broadest sense of the word.”

Cornell and Riverside theaters join forces every two years to stage a show at both facilities, blending casts, crews and costs in a mutually beneficial endeavor.

 “It provides (the students) with the opportunity to work side by side and be mentored by professional actors and to have a professional credit for their resumes,” Hunter says. “... It provides students with the opportunity to experience the same production mounted in two wildly different spaces in front of two wildly different audiences.”

Riverside Theatre founders Jody Hovland and Ron Clark of Iowa City have been artists in residence at Cornell for 25 years and are appearing in the show, as well.

Hovland says the joint stage productions, which began in 1996, “open up a whole range of plays that would be difficult for us to produce in terms of cast size and support needed for design and technical matters.

“The collaboration allows us to combine resources in a very exciting way. It's also truly thrilling to be able to mentor so closely a group of young artists, both technical as well as acting. To partner with these young artists is just really exciting for the seasoned players.”

Kropf also performed in the Riverside collaboration her freshman year, in “The Long Christmas Ride Home.”

 “It's really fun,” she says. “It's intimidating to walk in and be acting next to these professional actors. They're all so good. It's been great. I've learned a lot from them. They're all very friendly and very nice. I feel like we're all really friends as well as colleagues.”

ARTS EXTRA

What: “The Diary of Anne Frank”

When: Through Nov. 8; show times: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: Riverside Theatre, 213 N. Gilbert St., Iowa City

Tickets: $12 to $26 at Riverside's box office, (319) 338-7672, or www.riversidetheatre.org $12 student rush tickets available 20 minutes before show