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

I keep thinking back to the day when I got the phone call telling me that I was called back for Anne in Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. I keep recalling the afternoon of the call back, sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s station wagon, a handful of bobby pins, pinning and re-pinning my hair. I remember the butterflies in my stomach as we pulled into the Steppenwolf parking lot. These particular butterflies and I have a friendly relationship. They weren’t nervous butterflies, the kind that flap and writhe violently in your stomach. These were the gentle, friendly butterflies, cheerfully reminding me that I really had nothing to lose. I could hear them squealing with delight, “Oh my gosh, in a matter of seconds you will be INSIDE STEPPENWOLF, meeting TINA LANDAU! You get to read with a REAL STEPPENWOLF READER! For the next five minutes you get to share what you love with people who love it just as much as you do!” I owe a lot to those butterflies.

Now that the rehearsal process has begun and this experience that was once a distant fantasy is a part of my reality, it’s strange for me to think back to that time.

I am quickly discovering that the experience of working on this particular play, while enlightening and gratifying, comes with its own set of difficulties. During the read-through on the second day of rehearsal, as we neared the end of the second act, I sat listening to the characters’ persistent hopefulness and the beauty of the text being spoken aloud and was overcome by a desperate feeling of sadness. I suddenly felt helpless. I felt angry. I spoke the rest of my lines through tears, struggling to keep my voice steady, holding a tissue up to my nose so as not to drip onto the pages of my script. As soon as our stage manager, Malcolm, called break, Carolyn Faye Kramer (who is playing Margot Frank, my sister) took me by the hand and we walked up the curving staircase to the bathrooms. The moment we passed through the door to the third floor I sat down on one of the folding chairs outside the bathroom and began to cry. Tears and words flowed from me before I had a chance to stop them. “It’s too late,” I heard myself say. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s over, they’re gone, we can’t help, we’re too late to do anything!” Carolyn, always calm and reassuring, put her arm around me and graciously shared her wisdom, calming me down.

I’ve realized that it’s easy to fall into hopelessness, to find oneself trapped by feelings of anger and despair. There are moments when I feel as if neither I nor anyone can ever do enough, that no matter how hard we work to tell the Franks’ story, we cannot erase their suffering. No matter what beauty we may create, we cannot compensate for the millions of lives that were stolen and the millions left to endure through the wreckage of hatred.

But then there are those moments when everything feels worthwhile and I’m convinced that we have the power to do good, to affect some level of change. I hear Tina speak of the power of art to heal and fill the gaping holes that history has left behind. I see the commitment and passion that my fellow cast and crew members give every moment of every rehearsal. I can feel our collective dedication to dig the truth out of the ashes and debris and proudly reveal the bits of beauty that hidden memories have preserved.

I now realize that it was a good thing that I had my first encounter with this feeling of despair as early as I did in the rehearsal process because it led me to an important discovery. In studying the Holocaust it is all too easy to succumb to such feelings, to curse the injustice of the world and spend desolate hours mourning the millions of lost lives. However, after this first week of rehearsal, I’ve come to realize the importance of celebrating the memory of these lives. The vastness of the tragedy of the Holocaust often overshadows the memories of the lifetimes that came before, drowning the remnants of life that have persevered. Through this production of The Diary of Anne Frank, I hope to find a way to mourn the Holocaust victims who were lost while simultaneously celebrating the beauty of the lives that were lived.

This entry was posted by Claire Elizabeth Saxe on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 8:39 am 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.