Anne Frank: Public Face, Private Child
A dramatisation of Anne Frank’s Diaries
Palace Theatre, Watford
November, 1998
Edited by Diana Hillier, Tamsin Stanley and Claire Taylor
Directed by Diana Hillier
Performed by Tamsin Stanley and Claire Taylor
‘Gripping… engrossing… a mammoth undertaking… spellbinding’
Watford Observer
When the superb theatre director Diana Hillier asked me to join her and Tamsin Stanley in creating a theatrical piece based on Anne Frank’s Diaries, I leapt at the chance. The Anne Frank Educational Trust was taking its exhibition Anne Frank: A History for Today to Watford and our work was to be part of the associated activities going on in the town.
The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition had recently been published and we decided to use this as a starting point. This edition contains all three versions of Anne’s diaries; the original she wrote, the version she rewrote and edited herself after hearing a call on the radio for people to keep their diaries of their wartime experiences, and the version edited by her father after the war for publication. In all three versions, two voices are very clear: the ‘public’ Anne, who is a naughty, clever, sulky, cheeky, lively teenager who cheers everyone up and also drives them crazy; and the ‘private’ Anne, who is a thoughtful, analytical, gentle and strong, terrified and fearless young woman known only to herself. Anne discusses these two aspects of herself in her final diary entry. We felt very strongly that we should use only Anne’s words in the piece, so we decided to choose extracts that would coherently tell the full story of Anne’s diaries from beginning to end – a distillation rather than an interpretation – and present them as a conversation between these two sides of Anne.
Together, we edited the diaries to produce a final script that took just under an hour and a half to read. Then, me and Diana flew to Amsterdam and went to Anne Frank’s house. We took our scripts and read each diary entry in the room where the events described had taken place. In corners of the bedrooms, bathroom, living room and office we spoke Anne’s words slowly and quietly to each other. We looked out of the windows and saw the views Anne had seen and heard the Westerkerk clock chime as she had so many times. I find it hard to describe how this felt.
Anne’s diaries are overflowing with life. In April 1944, she wrote ‘I want to go on living even after my death’. Her own words ensure she will.
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