And Yet
Posted by Tina Landau on 10/20/2006MONDAY, OCTOBER 9
Some days, the most delightful revelations come from the most unexpected places. Today I learned how to “light” the production not from being in the Annex but from - Rembrandt. Makes sense of course, considering Amsterdam was the Dutch master’s home – but who knew. More on that anon.
To start with: my control-freak imperative to be “first on line.” We did indeed get up early and make our way around the corner to the Anne Frank House – only to discover a large group of Japanese tourists, all women, already clustered outside the entrance, having clearly been there awhile. We stood with them in the cold, as a longer line formed behind us and, by the time the House opened, we were…. well, almost first inside. When we entered, the Japanese group paused in the lobby to hear a speech and I said to Niki, “Quick – let’s go upstairs to the Annex and come back to this museum section afterward.” (I had researched enough to know that the complex begins in a building adjacent to the offices and Annex.) We quickly passed through this museum section, the storage and work rooms, and the offices where Otto Frank, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler (condensed into one Mr. Kraler in the play) and Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl (just Miep in the play) worked at desks – and went up to the Annex itself.
There was the bookcase. The famous bookcase that swings open and closed to reveal the secret entrance to the Annex. I took a couple photos – Richard had asked me both about images and measurements – but then suddenly, as we were making our way through the secret entrance, a man appeared to tell us that photography was not permitted. Of course. It makes complete sense – and I found myself suddenly relieved that no photos were allowed – both so I could avoid the intrusive snapshots and posings of others, but even moreso so I was forced to put the darn camera away and just be there. (I remember once, when I was in La Jolla dining al fresco on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, I paused to watch a glorious red sun set in its last moment on the horizon, and then noticed that dozens of people were standing around me with their cameras to their eyes, attempting to catch this moment of final setting on film… and, in fact, missing it with their own eyes. I took a note to self: do not become so involved taking pictures of something that you miss experiencing the thing itself.)
For fifteen minutes or so, I was alone in the rooms of the Annex. First the bedroom of Otto and Edith Frank, later shared by Margot as well. On the wall I found the markings where their parents had measured Anne’s and Margot’s growth in pencil lines, as well as the map of Normandy where Otto Frank recorded the allied invasion with pins. From there, I walked into Anne’s room, later shared by Fritz Pfeffer (known in the play by the pseudonym Anne used in her diary, Mr. Dussel). Here I looked at the images Anne had glued to her walls: Norma Shearer, Shirley Temple, Ray Milland, scenes of bucolic country houses, a poster for her father’s pectin business, postcards of cherubs, a basket of strawberries, four monkeys eating at a table like humans. Anne’s bedroom led to the washroom and toilet (the one place the residents of the Annex could be assured of privacy), and out from there back to the stairs which lead to the second floor. Up the very steep (very Dutch canal house) stairs. On the second floor I entered into the Van Pels’s (renamed the Van Daans in the diary and play) bedroom-cum-common living area, then Peter’s small room, which also houses the stairs to the attic. The attic figures very prominently in both the diary and the play and therefore I was surprised (and disappointed) to discover that it is closed off to the public. But then I remembered reading about how, when Otto Frank returned to the Annex after the war, he went up to the attic with only one other person at a time, due to the floor being so weak and unstable. There’s a famous portrait of him standing in the attic taken by the photographer Arnold Newman on one such visit when they made their wives wait below (Otto Frank eventually remarried.) Today, there is a mirror located at the top of the stairs and angled so that the viewer below can glimpse the space above. So there I stood straining to see the view Anne might have had of the Westerkerk or the chestnut tree through the attic window – but of the scaffolded Westerkerk (which I couldn’t really see anyway) and through a mirror reflection which revealed but a sliver of attic.
Once the crowds began to filter into the Annex, I headed back to the start of the exhibit and took my time going through it from the beginning and in order – from the museum, to the offices, to the Annex again, and back out to more museum, gift shop, etc.
What struck me today about the totality of the space is its labyrinthine quality. It is a maze. Everywhere you look there is another door leading to another hallway or room or closet. In a way, it is no wonder that no one ever surmised there was a door behind a bookcase leading to a secret hiding place. There are so many doors, and staircases, and ways to go into or out of one space of another. And yet of course it is also amazing that no one ever wondered what was housed in the entire back portion of this large building complex. And yet, again, it all makes sense when you are there because you realize that the workers at the business had no need to ever go above the entire ground floor (what we traditionally call the first floor), that the second floor was the offices of everyone who knew about the Franks, and that the third floor (where the bookcase is located) was only used as additional storage. And yet… and yet…
Even being there, it is hard for the mind to comprehend the reality that occurred.
The space plays games with you: is it large, or is it small? It keeps changing. When you think of the Anne Frank story, you most likely imagine a tiny, cramped space in which the inhabitants huddled. I’ve learned that this is what most people preconceive – a mistaken notion that the entire group hid in a single attic. Then, whether you assumed this or only that the space was tight, you are surprised to find out that the hiding place is comprised of three floors, that there are separate bedrooms, etc. And you think about how spacious it is – how unlike what you assumed. The way the House is laid out as an exhibit makes it even more deceptive. It’s designed as a journey, and through two buildings. So by the time you weave through the museum, various video installations, the work rooms, the floor of offices, the floor of storage, the annex rooms, the exhibit rooms thereafter which give information on the fates of the group, the camps, the publication of the diary, the Anne Frank foundation, etc, - after all that, you’ve made quite a trek through quite a large space. And you forget that where these eight people lived was just a small fragment of the space you’ve just traversed. And you forget that when they lived there the window coverings were not transparent as they are now, letting in natural light from outside. And you forget that they lived there together in those four rooms for two years. I went back into the Annex rooms again – only those four rooms (five with washroom) – and stayed there for a long time. I thought about length, about time, about waiting – and I realized, without any uncertainty, that the Annex is very, very small indeed. Unimaginably small.
Oh, but the mind never ceases teasing and comparing and trying to reconcile a reality that remains elusive to me:
“And yet,” I thought…
My mind fast-forwarded to the trains on which the victims were soon to be transported, and then the bunks of Auschwitz where they were to be bedded with dozens of others, and for a moment I crazily thought about how “fortunate” the Franks were for these two years, how palatial the Annex suddenly seemed again in certain respects…
It all keeps shifting, and none of it ever makes sense.
As I made my way to the café, I realized that my first visit inside the House had actually proved somewhat anticlimactic. When I had told friends and colleagues over the last months that I was making this trip, anyone who had previously visited said the exact same thing to me: “It is very powerful” or “It is very moving.” Today, I felt oddly detached. Analytic. I’m sure some of it was my self-protection against a rising wave of fierce emotion, and some of it a pure focus on the work at hand and design of the production, but also:
Can places get so built up in our imaginations – so endowed with some essential or magical power - that they can, in reality, only disappoint?
Or is there something about this particular “museum”? What I often love about going to a museum is the way in which information can accumulate to the point of saturation…. what Marshall MacLuhan described as “Information overload equals pattern recognition.” How details accumulate and overwhelm until some greater whole, or recognition, makes itself manifest in the mind, and beyond words or facts or figures. The Anne Frank House seems to be conceived on an opposing model: it is simple, concise and, I am positive, designed to stimulate traffic flow. This has resulted in there being very few spaces to mull, to linger, to immerse, to read any detailed information. It is most definitely a “beginner’s guide” to the Anne Frank story, with all the obvious aspects covered, but generally and reductively. For someone like me, who has already done a fair amount of research on the subject, the exhibit itself was frustratingly obvious and basic. I was mostly amazed at the facts that they chose not to include. As a big believer in the architect Mies van der Rohe’s notion that “God is in the details,” I found this initial visit to be remarkably prosaic. I wish at least there was a room at the end where you could simply sit and read the diary. Or simply sit.
Instead, as you return to the lobby spaces, you are offered some computers to contribute a “leaf” to the Anne Frank “tree” – a way really of logging in to say that you were there, a virtual guestbook. In order to fill out the form, you must agree to the sentence (can’t remember if this is the exact wording), “I too have been inspired by Anne Frank.” This intrigued me and incensed Niki (who happens to be a scholar who works on the Holocaust, having listened to many testimonies from survivors, worked at the Shoah Foundation in LA, etc). As Niki put it, “Why aren’t we allowed to have our own responses? Why are our emotions dictated to us?” She felt that the museum was being packaged for us into an experience that could only mean and result in one thing: affirmation, hope, inspiration. As she continued to say, which made a lot of sense to me, the reactions one might have to this story, to the House, to the Holocaust, are multiple, and complex, and perhaps contradictory – but not necessarily all one thing and not necessarily “affirmative.” Maybe someone’s legitimate response was “Anne Frank devastated me today” - should they not sign the virtual guestbook?
(When I asked Niki to read this over to make sure I’m representing her accurately, she wrote back to me the following addition: “In general, emotions are, for me, one of the most difficult things to negotiate around any attempt to work on the Holocaust—emotions in oneself, emotions “dictated” by external forces, the emotional meanings that the event can inadvertently bring along with any attempt to represent it, in fact, the way emotions can limit and thwart one’s approach, and one’s audience’s approach, to the material. Indeed I feel strongly that one cannot simply “feel” in response to the Holocaust. It demands one’s best abilities to think—with, through, and, at times, beyond emotion.”)
I understand the desire, and need, and human compulsion, to make something good out of something horrible. And certainly, this is a large part of what has made this young girl’s spirit, and her words, last well into our time. Anne’s hope. Anne’s radiance. And this is certainly, too, a large part of what I hope to convey in the production. A distinct outlook that, I believe, is directly attributable to age, a time in one’s life. It is exquisite, and unbearably sweet, and deeply moving… how it awakens in me both a sense of loss (the unhurried, familiar kind that accompanies growing up) as well as an active yearning to regain it… It? A belief in the goodness of life. And yet…
And yet, I agree with Niki that the emotional impact of the site, on me at least, is far more complex than pure “inspiration.” Just as I hope the impact of the production will be on our audiences. And that is why I am so aware of and grateful for the changes that were made in the play text between the original 1955 production and the newly adapted 1997 version. While not everything in the new version “works” for me at the moment, it is a far cry from the more sentimental, and aesthetically old-fashioned, approach of the original. The greatest example of this for me, and right to the point of the “leaf dedications” at the end of the exhibit, is the fact that the early version of the play ends with these famous words of Anne’s:
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
It was virtually the last thing the audience heard, the final gift and echo – although, in truth, these words were excerpted from their original full context, which begins (as translated in the Kesselman version):
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.”
And then Anne additionally writes, “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. I see the world slowly being transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder which will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions.”
Just as the original version of the play was produced for its time, I hope that we can make an Anne Frank that is of and for our time. By this I mean:
“The diary was published by her father who thought it prudent to edit the passages on her sexuality and Jewish identity in order to avoid offending conservatives and to give the diary a universal feel. It was then decided to adapt the book into a play and the famous author Meyer Levin was given the task of adapting it. His version was discarded for being ‘too Jewish’ and the task was given to the duo of Goodrich and Hackett, who were more familiar with writing light-hearted comedies and musicals.” Goodrich and Hackett are Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the team that wrote the films The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and most ironically, or perfectly, It’s a Wonderful Life.
“The result was a much more universal, feel-good play that completely avoided any unpleasantness of the Holocaust. Initially this play was met with glowing critical reviews and Goodrich and Hackett their first real taste of success. The play catered exactly to what the mindset of the times needed - something warm and spiritually uplifting that proved that there was a chance for good to survive even after the worst onslaught of evil.” This was the decade directly following World War II – and after only ten years had passed since the action of the play.
“In 1997, Wendy Kesselman revisited the play, adding previously edited information concerning Anne’s sexuality and the menace of the Holocaust which was politely ignored in the older version. The result is a haunting tragedy that brings the horror of the Holocaust closer to the fore while making Anne herself a more rounded and complex character.” This new version, by Kesselman, ends not with Anne’s luminous statement about the goodness of mankind, but with Otto Frank dryly recounting, directly to the audience, the fates of the seven others who were in hiding in with him – ending with Anne, his daughter, and her death of typhus while confined at Bergen-Belsen, shortly before the camps were liberated.
For these times, I hope to make a production that looks with an unflinching gaze, embracing both the light and the dark – in Anne, in the Annex, in history and our responses to it. Neither sugar-coated nor sentimentalized. Incorporating hope, but not limited to it. As critic Arline Greer wrote, “The new version of the play was not written for a world that needs another perfunctory hug but rather a stiff shot of sincerity.” And as Ben Brantley wrote in his NYTimes review of the ‘97 Broadway production (in which our very own Austin Pendleton played Mr. Dussel), “This new interpretation never relaxes its awareness of the hostile world beyond the attic that was the Franks’ sanctuary and prison for two claustrophobic years, nor of the religious identity that made them a quarry. The earlier version began in a scene of sentimental hindsight, with Anne’s father discovering her diaries; this one leaps, with a gripping immediacy, into medias res.” (I had to look up that phrase: “In medias res is Latin for ‘into the middle of things.’ It describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but in the middle — usually at some crucial point in the action. The term comes from the ancient Roman poet Horace, who advised the aspiring epic poet to go straight to the heart of the story,” as was done in Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid.)
And so, as I sit here thinking about the leaf I added to the Anne Frank tree today, I am reminded of my imperatives for the production: let it be nuanced, and thorny, and rife with contradiction. Find immediacy, find directness, find vibrancy on stage. Make it as fully alive, as present, as detailed, as palpable, as possible. Embrace Anne’s hope but don’t shy away either from her fear, her despair. Find what inspires, yes, but also what enrages, or sickens, or simply annoys. Take away the gauze. Pack a wallop. This is too big, and I refuse to do an “easy” production on this most difficult of subjects.
So – this all has something to do with light and dark – both metaphorically and now, as I will move on, visually. I thought today was all about the art I saw AFTER the Anne Frank House, but am now realizing how much I do in fact have to say about my experience of the site itself. I am sorry to go on so long. I think I NEED to talk all this out. It is very helpful (thank you Ed, and Martha, and all at Steppenwolf for providing this forum!) I will move on now to what I learned about the production after leaving the Anne Frank House for today – but, first, I will take a brief break here, as my hand hurts from typing. Somehow this seems ludicrous in light of what I am writing and thinking about – and yet…. my hand hurts. To be continued.