Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

Ensemble member Tina Landau will be directing The Diary of Anne Frank later this season. To prepare, she traveled to Amsterdam to research the actual events that underlie the play. We asked her to blog about her experience.

SUNDAY, OCT. 8

What do I hope to find?

I’ve come to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank House - which is what it is called but not, technically, what it is. It’s her hiding place – the secret annex – that her father and associates arranged for her and others to live in while the Nazis occupied their city and WWII raged. They were Jews in hiding – eight of them in these tight and shuttered quarters – “How can this possibly translate into English as her ‘house’”? I wonder (although I’m sure it’s a translation of the Dutch word “huis,” which has alternate meanings such as “building” and “location of”…)

The one thing I’m quite sure I can find here is what the space feels like to be inside – the architecture, the dimensions, the light, etc. Beyond that I can only hope, but not assume, that I will gain insight for the production I’m directing at Steppenwolf this Spring. But what kind it will be, when it will be revealed, how it will unfold – anyone’s guess. To begin, I know only that I can actually go inside the very rooms where the Franks and Van Pels hid – and that is enough. I’m just beginning the design process now – having met once with all designers, and about to meet again with set designer Richard Hoover upon my return - and I hope this trip will enable me to communicate to him a greater sense of detail and reality. And I hope again later, with the cast in rehearsal, I’ll be able to draw on this trip to help convey to them (and in turn therefore our audiences) some of the actual place.

My first view of the actual place comes from the airport van when the driver says, “And there is the famous Anne Frank House. And there are the lines of people waiting to get in.” It was 8:30 a.m. this morning, a quiet Sunday morning in Amsterdam. The streets were still and soundless – but there, winding around the corner from Prinsengracht 263, was a line of people already waiting for the house to open at 9 a.m. I’m here for several days with my girlfriend Niki and we had just decided to not go to the house on our first jet-lagged day as I want to arrive there in tip-top form. Now, seeing the line of tourists, I know we’ve made the right decision to wait until tomorrow because now, not only can I be alert, but I can be first in line. I determine to wake up early and be at the head of that line. I refuse to have my first experience of the Anne Frank House as one of a long line of tourists who are being shuffled at a particular pace with no room for pause or reflection, no silence, no space.

After walking the city streets for our first four hours as we waited to check in to our hotel, we passed by the House once again, this time on foot and close up. And again, what struck me first were the lines. Winding around the corner. And this is “low season.” I learned later that the House welcomes roughly 930,000 tourists a year and that the stairs leading from the first to second floor of the Annex needs to be replaced every two years.

I know why I am here, but what about all these other people – standing patiently, waiting to see what?, hoping to feel what?, understand what? What is it about this story that brings so many here, all of whom obviously feel they have some stake in it, some claim to it, some knowledge of it… Why do people come here? To learn, to feel, to remember, or….?

I’ve booked us a hotel around the corner from the Anne Frank House so I can listen to the bells of the Westerkerk (the “western church”) as Anne did from hiding and as she so frequently describes in her diary. The clock chimes every fifteen minutes, with different variations to indicate the fifteen minute mark, the half hour, and the hour. I also know that there were two sights which Anne describes seeing from the attic windows of the Annex: a favorite chestnut tree, and the clock tower of the Westerkerk. There’s a famous photograph of the church tower as viewed through one of the attic windows – a photograph that has stayed with me, and which I showed the designers at our first meeting, because it speaks so eloquently of the power of sky and light and space as glimpsed from a small interior space. So I’ve been looking forward to seeing this landmark with my own eyes. From the street, I gazed up to discover that the Westerkerk (like much of Amsterdam it seems) is under renovation. The tower is completely shrouded in scaffolding. I can’t really see it. Oh well. I take a photo of the scaffolding. I realized then, for the first of several times thus far, that no matter how I try or desire, I cannot go back there, re-create or enter Anne’s experience – the particular sights, sounds, smells that constituted her world. A giant barrier has been erected to remind me that time marches on and there is now some irretractable divide between Anne’ actual experience and my ability to know or comprehend it. What struck me first today then was how much there might be NOT to see - how impossible it might prove to go back and access these experiences in any direct way - how my attempt will likely become a series of necessarily partial approaches.

But then I turned away from the Westerkerk and the lines of tourists, and just stared for a while across the lovely canal which Anne could see when she occasionally peaked through the curtains in the front part of the building (before her father restricted access to that part of the building after a scare one night.) The trees, the light, the wind – it was so exquisite, and I imagined this little girl behind the window up there who could “see” but not “feel” any of this – and I imagined her longing – I imagined what it would be like for me to remember these sensations but be denied them. And in spite of my having only moments before been aware of my complete remove from this place, I now felt an intimacy with it. I suppose it was the Imagination which led me there – as it so often can and does in the work I do. So I cried as I stood there gazing at the canal, now imagining Anne’s version of a “partial” experience.

As we walked away from the house, we passed again not the entrance to the museum part, but the entrance of 263 Prinsengracht itself, which served as Otto Frank’s business. Because I was a little teary still, Niki asked me what specifically I was feeling – but all I could manage was, “It’s real.” Well, of course, it’s real, Tina – what else could it be?! A movie, I guess. A book. A play. Sometimes I fear that my experience (however partial in this case) is wholly filtered through and corrupted by the media – images of places that I am fed before I ever see them, or stories of experiences before I ever have them. So, for instance, when I finally saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, I recognized it first from the movies I’d seen of it and then, only later, was I able to find my way toward some authentic, first-hand experience of it. In these situations, the primary encounter for me becomes one of familiarity as opposed to strangeness, one of recognition instead of discovery. And so, I was grateful now, here, today - to stand outside the Anne Frank House and, for that one brief moment at least, let all that fall away and just experience the building itself and as if for the first time – to realize, no, it’s not a book, it’s not a movie or the photos I’ve already seen of it, it’s real, it’s here, and I’m standing right in front of it - and tomorrow I’ll go inside.

This entry was posted by Tina Landau on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 12:10 pm and is filed under The Diary of Anne Frank. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.