February 25, 2007 – THE REVISED DESIGN
Posted by Tina Landau on 3/21/2007Well, finally, back to Anne Frank. I’ve been in NYC opening a play at the Vineyard Theater, called Mary Rose by J.M. Barrie. As happens to me on a production, I became completely immersed in that particular world but, now that it is up and running, am back to Anne Frank, ready to fully dive in as I gear up to start rehearsals next week.
I left off here, a couple months ago, just as we made a big shift in our design approach to the production. It was a scary and exhilarating move, and one I’m thrilled we made when and as we did - let me explain:
Richard Hoover (the set designer) and I had done a design that was a fairly realistic replica of the Annex, as best we could fit it in the Steppenwolf theater and reveal its rooms to our audience. My mandate from the get-go was to observe and recreate the Annex in as much detail as possible. We quickly discovered, however, that we could not choose a single wall to “open up” without other, primary playing spaces (rooms) being blocked to the audience. So we had to alter the architecture a tad, change the placement of the bathroom, forgo being able to see into Peter’s room, etc. Additionally, we had the challenge of the Annex’s verticality. I was determined not to do what has most consistently been done in other productions of Anne Frank, which is to splay the space open in a horizontal fashion, so that rooms are visible, but in a more rambling and theatrically traditional ground-plan. However, when we stacked the rooms on top of each other vertically as they are in the Annex, we discovered myriad problems with sight-lines, engineering, and expense. It felt huge and cumbersome, as opposed to tight and contained. And we were not even sure if we could execute it, logistically or financially.
Richard and I kept trying to pursue this one way, which I was convinced was the only way. At one meeting, as we both brooded together about our obstacles, I asked, “Is there ANY other way we haven’t explored?” (We had, in fact, looked at many different options, all of which I had rejected.) “Is there ANY other way we can do the Annex?!” Richard casually joked, “Not unless you want them to come in and tape the rooms out on the floor.” Although this was not the precise solution, it instantly triggered something in me that freed my thinking, burst open the play, and created new possibilities for the entire production. Richard and I pursued this seed of an idea and subsequently have developed, along with our other collaborators, a new design approach to the production.
We are no longer working within an architectural replica of the Annex, but within a more open, abstract space. Rather than walls, doors, etc. we’re going to be dealing only with minimal props and furniture, as necessary, and within this wide, open expanse (a black rake, a black back wall, that’s it.) We are going to limit what the actors have there, can use, in way of props, furniture, clothes, food, etc. In some small way, a parallel to the situation in the Annex. The approach involves letting go of the architectural concreteness of the set and replacing it with a more psychological space. A return to a sense of doing it “with nothing.” Bodies in space. An emphasis on the people, as opposed to the architecture.
At pre-show, the space is empty except for, way upstage center, there is a large pile of stuff – furniture, boxes, etc. - part the stuff as described at the top of the play (boxes and furniture for the Annex), part sculptural installation, and part reminder of the images of collections of objects from the Holocaust – a mountain of evidence. From this, the Franks (and then Van Daans too) need to set up and create the Annex as best they can. The outlines of the rooms are taped, or chalked, on the floor. Working within the confined dimensions, they try to establish a life here. They jerry-rig. They organize. They make an attempt at normalcy. They survive as best they can. What they have to do so are the givens of the rooms, the things have been previously brought and stored there, as well as what they can carry when they enter. That’s all. Inside the rooms will be placed key furniture and objects only as necessary.
There is a palpable contrast and tension between the black surround and the naturalistic, period furnishings, props, clothes, etc. Somewhat like and inspired by the movie, Dogville. But it is a stage of course, so it takes on the poetry at times of dance – human bodies, in movement, against an expanse. Within this, people act with authenticity and nuance, with psychological and behavioral veracity. It is very theatrical – but raw, honest, direct. Perhaps more like a Pina Bausch piece than like Dogville.
I hope the approach will wake the play up in a powerful way – one that’s both fresh but also respectful of its source. I think we’ll be able to create a real, organic world on stage but also shift some of the focus off of where it’s traditionally placed in productions of Anne Frank: on the concrete reality, the details, of the Annex – on the weight of the “real” (this really happened, this is how it really looked, etc.) - a kind of subservience to historical accuracy, which I both honor and have as well, but which I also know can quickly paralyze or limit. Our new approach still embraces and incorporates the historical research, but additionally places increased focus on the people – their actions, expressions, interiority. A perhaps more psychological and dream-like Anne Frank than a purely representational, naturalistic one. I believe too that this is one of the several goals of Wendy Kesselman’s newly revised version of 1997, which we’re using as our text.
At bottom line: this new approach is less a process of invention or abstraction, then it is one of distillation. I think of Elie Wiesel’s statement that, “Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.” I am hoping to remove, in order to make more visible. To allow what IS there to register, to speak, to pop, to glow, with an even greater intensity and articulation.
At first, those several months ago, I was riddled with questions: Was it too conceptual? How would it help bring forth the play? Would it make me, as a potential audience member, lean forward with attention, or would it make me sit back at a distance? My goal was then, as it firmly remains, to bring forth the play with as much immediacy and honesty as possible. To breathe life. To remember. The more I’ve lived with and worked through the new design, the more excited I’ve become about what we launch into next week, and it’s “rightness” as a vessel for bringing forth this story:
The design takes my original understanding of a group of people having to make due with what they are given, and create a home, of way of life, with virtually nothing, to more heightened expression.
It allows a stage-world that can contain both the exteriority of stuff, details, props, furniture, naturalistic behavior, etc. AS WELL AS the interiority of subjective POV, Anne’s dreams, the more expressionistic “nightmare” of the thing.
It undercuts some of the warm, fuzzy feel that seems to color people’s preconceptions and expectations around the play, and restores to it some of the tension and anxiety that I think permeates the Diary itself.
It places us in this moment, in this theater, on this night – and allows the play to be what it most intrinsically is: an act of remembrance. Otto Frank is revealed at the play’s end to be a kind of narrator after-the-facts. He speaks directly to us, the audience here at Steppenwolf, in a very bare, exposed environment – the theater. It is the way it’s written, and it makes dramaturgical sense to me to use this frame as a core reality.
The design resonates with Anne’s words at the end of Act One:
“I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we stand is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty above, but we’re cut off by the dark mass of clouds and can go neither up nor down. It looms before us, and impenetrable wall, trying to crush us but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, “Oh ring, ring, open wide and let us out!”
The arrival at this design has been quite a process: first, the intense research; then, a devotion to historical accuracy; and now, ultimately, an expression which, although less literal, is no less true. I could never have started here, however – without going to Amsterdam, without doing the first ultra-realistic design. It would not have been informed or earned, and it would have done a disservice to the piece and to myself. I’ve had to go through these exact stages, and now have a sense that they will all somehow be a part of what is ultimately produced on stage. Yes, it was hard to let go of the walls, the wallpaper, etc. but ultimately, I chose the mode of expression that I believe will most powerfully allow this story to be told in our theater, and in the most “alive” way. I’ve arrived at a beginning point for me and the company that I’m confident acknowledges and incorporates the historical record but is not limited to it. I hope to make a piece of theater that is both accountable and creative, both responsible and daring, both grounded and fully awake.
So, that’s my catch-up on the design – the biggest news to report from the last several months of Anne Frank prep. The process has caused me to devour all I could get my hands on related to the play’s production history as well as theoretical notions of how best to portray the Holocaust on stage. I entered an entirely new relationship with the play, and became interested in this new aspect of working on the production: the representation of the Holocaust – its issues, conundrums, imperatives. Making the shift from a more conventional, representational design to a more expressive and abstract one has forced me to learn and think about new and complicated issues. And I’m looking forward to all the other new issues that will arise as we now begin rehearsal, whatever they may be…