The last few weeks (Part 3)
[ In which is recounted the week+ leading up to and including the BTC's 2006 performance of The Diary of Anne Frank ]
At this rate, I could go on forever using the "last few weeks" subject because I'm staying about a week behind - but that's irrelevant to Anne Frank. The show itself was amazing, but I'll get to that in a bit... first a little bit about the set and stuff.
I'm going to begin narration starting Sunday, March 5th - move-in day. The plan was to do final construction for the set in the afternoon and then move into the Princess around 6:00pm. Well, the first part of that plan worked OK, but we didn't get into the Princess exactly when we wanted to. The previous tenants had a two hour long show starting at 3:30 that afternoon, so by the time they got out.... yeah.
Thankfully, it was a beautifully warm, sunny day... I can't imagine how much trouble we'd have been in with rainy weather. The set itself was HUGE, and there's no way we could have done everything inside the Studio. To give you an idea, the stage at the Princess is 45 feet wide, and our set covered 43.5 feet of that. At ground level, we had a row of flats stretching across the entire stage, creating the walls of Anne's bedroom and of the common room. In the center was a giant stairway (climbing them -> downstage) leading up to the attic - a 16x8 foot area set 8.5 feet off the stage.
One good thing about the set, though, was its relative simplicity. Although it was huge, it wasn't terribly complicated - and entirely static... thank Heaven no rolling pieces - and most of what we needed was already constructed and merely required paint. We spent a few hours that afternoon applying paint, constructing a few new jacks, (going to Lagniappes for milk shakes), tacking the roof support together, and getting props ready to move... but overall it was a fairly lazy sort of thing... but we were also having a lot of fun. There was this little paint war going on between James and Bridget/Aimee... I think James "lost" in that he got painted most. But he did get... *ahem* ...decorated.
When the time came to move in, it was like a small tornado hit. It took less than two hours to get that ginormous set put together on stage. Even Penny was impressed. Of course, we weren't really finished at that point. There were little things to add/adjust/fix throughout the week, but that wasn't too dreadful.
Our performances of Anne Frank were amazing, wonderful, poignant, and at times heart-wrenching. The school shows (especially Friday morning) had their shaky points, but on the whole weren't bad. Anyone remember how much Wait Until Dark got rewritten? After the Friday morning school show, we all trooped over to the Carnegie Visual Arts Center to view the Anne Frank exhibit they have on display throughout the month of March. Seeing those pictures and being reminded of the events surrounding the story... being reminded just how real the story is... sparked an intensity in all of us that flowed out into a superb show that evening and then on through the weekend. I think that most of the cast truly melded with their characters. It was no longer acting. It was ... Wow.
I played one of the Nazi soldiers who take the Franks, Van Danns, etc. away. [I will now wait until the chorus of booing fades.] At first, I was just thinking of the role as an almost afterthought. Something not really integral to the play at all. But as I watched the first part of the play during rehearsal this past week, it struck me how incorrect I was to think that. Without the Nazis coming to take them all away, the story of Anne Frank is reduced to that of just a girl in an attic. A talented, lovable girl, but just a girl. Their capture and eventual deaths are what bring their story from vague obscurity to become an icon of Jewish suffering during that time.
On the reverse, without the first 115 minutes of the play, those last five minutes are relatively meaningless. Oh, I'm sure the audience would feel sympathy for a Jewish family discovered in the first few minutes of the play, but the impact would be totally different. By the end of 115 minutes we know the Franks, Van Danns, and Mr. Dussel... we've been cramped together with them; suffered through kale soup and years of uncertainty. We feel the joy of the coming liberation. And then we are crushed as the Nazis drag them away.
At this rate, I could go on forever using the "last few weeks" subject because I'm staying about a week behind - but that's irrelevant to Anne Frank. The show itself was amazing, but I'll get to that in a bit... first a little bit about the set and stuff.
I'm going to begin narration starting Sunday, March 5th - move-in day. The plan was to do final construction for the set in the afternoon and then move into the Princess around 6:00pm. Well, the first part of that plan worked OK, but we didn't get into the Princess exactly when we wanted to. The previous tenants had a two hour long show starting at 3:30 that afternoon, so by the time they got out.... yeah.
Thankfully, it was a beautifully warm, sunny day... I can't imagine how much trouble we'd have been in with rainy weather. The set itself was HUGE, and there's no way we could have done everything inside the Studio. To give you an idea, the stage at the Princess is 45 feet wide, and our set covered 43.5 feet of that. At ground level, we had a row of flats stretching across the entire stage, creating the walls of Anne's bedroom and of the common room. In the center was a giant stairway (climbing them -> downstage) leading up to the attic - a 16x8 foot area set 8.5 feet off the stage.
One good thing about the set, though, was its relative simplicity. Although it was huge, it wasn't terribly complicated - and entirely static... thank Heaven no rolling pieces - and most of what we needed was already constructed and merely required paint. We spent a few hours that afternoon applying paint, constructing a few new jacks, (going to Lagniappes for milk shakes), tacking the roof support together, and getting props ready to move... but overall it was a fairly lazy sort of thing... but we were also having a lot of fun. There was this little paint war going on between James and Bridget/Aimee... I think James "lost" in that he got painted most. But he did get... *ahem* ...decorated.
When the time came to move in, it was like a small tornado hit. It took less than two hours to get that ginormous set put together on stage. Even Penny was impressed. Of course, we weren't really finished at that point. There were little things to add/adjust/fix throughout the week, but that wasn't too dreadful.
Our performances of Anne Frank were amazing, wonderful, poignant, and at times heart-wrenching. The school shows (especially Friday morning) had their shaky points, but on the whole weren't bad. Anyone remember how much Wait Until Dark got rewritten? After the Friday morning school show, we all trooped over to the Carnegie Visual Arts Center to view the Anne Frank exhibit they have on display throughout the month of March. Seeing those pictures and being reminded of the events surrounding the story... being reminded just how real the story is... sparked an intensity in all of us that flowed out into a superb show that evening and then on through the weekend. I think that most of the cast truly melded with their characters. It was no longer acting. It was ... Wow.
I played one of the Nazi soldiers who take the Franks, Van Danns, etc. away. [I will now wait until the chorus of booing fades.] At first, I was just thinking of the role as an almost afterthought. Something not really integral to the play at all. But as I watched the first part of the play during rehearsal this past week, it struck me how incorrect I was to think that. Without the Nazis coming to take them all away, the story of Anne Frank is reduced to that of just a girl in an attic. A talented, lovable girl, but just a girl. Their capture and eventual deaths are what bring their story from vague obscurity to become an icon of Jewish suffering during that time.
On the reverse, without the first 115 minutes of the play, those last five minutes are relatively meaningless. Oh, I'm sure the audience would feel sympathy for a Jewish family discovered in the first few minutes of the play, but the impact would be totally different. By the end of 115 minutes we know the Franks, Van Danns, and Mr. Dussel... we've been cramped together with them; suffered through kale soup and years of uncertainty. We feel the joy of the coming liberation. And then we are crushed as the Nazis drag them away.