By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – A line formed after Eva Schloss, stepsister of Anne Frank, spoke recently at Chabad of Poway. When it was the turn of 15-year-old Bryn Williams to kneel next to the chair of the 90-year-old Schloss, they had a particularly animated discussion. Williams, a veteran of the Pickwick Players performance group in Santee, recently had landed the lead role in The Diary of Anne Frank which will be presented April 19-21 and April 26-27 by the American History Theater at Liberty Station’s White Box Theater Space, 2590 Truxton Road, Suite 205. It will be the first time Williams has the lead in a play, and the first time she is acting with a different theater troupe.
Schloss asked a bit mischievously whether Williams liked Julian De La Mora, who will play the role of Peter, the young man who hid from the Nazis with his family and Anne’s in a “secret annex” in Amsterdam, Holland. Yes, he’s nice, responded Williams. Then, Williams asked Schloss to tell her something about Anne Frank, with whom Schloss used to play before the Holocaust, never knowing that someday their names would be linked. Anne’s father and Eva’s mother married after the Holocaust, both having suffered the murders of their spouses and other members of their families. Schloss became Anne’s step-sister posthumously. She told Williams that the girl she remembered was interested in her hair style, and that she was very outgoing.
The interaction between Schloss and Williams was described in a telephone interview on Wednesday by Amber Denise Robinson, the vice president and co-founder of American History Theatre, a company that focuses on stories about veterans, women, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and military and sexual trauma. “They were connecting in a really special way,” Robinson said. “We were very proud of that moment. They were sharing laughs.”
She added that Williams, a student at Carlton Oaks Junior High School in Santee, had researched the character of Anne Frank, and said that meeting Schloss in person was “one of the most special things she has gotten to do in her life.”
Like many other cast members in the play, Williams is a Gentile, and therefore did not have the depth of exposure to the Holocaust with which some Jewish teenagers have grown up. As preparation for putting on the play, cast member Lolly Boroff (a Jewish community member who plays Mrs. Van Daan), Robinson and the president of American History Theatre, Hal Berry, invited representatives of the Butterfly Project to talk about the Holocaust.
The Butterfly Project, cofounded by Jan Landau and Cheryl Rattner Price, seeks to memorialize the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust with an equal number of ceramic butterflies hand-painted by sympathizers. The discussion between the cast and Project Butterfly representatives was so engaging that agreement was reached to have ceramic butterflies ready for painting at the will-call window of the White Box Theatre. Doors to the theater will open at 7 p.m., with the play getting underway a half hour later.
American History Theater cofounder Robinson said the cast and crew all painted butterflies, and were touched by the stories that the Butterfly Project representatives told them about family members who had survived the Holocaust. One speaker brought along a striped concentration camp uniform that a grandparent had been required to wear.
Although the story of Anne Frank falls outside the realm of American history, which was the theater’s starting point, it does deal with such issues as wartime trauma. One might say that the boundaries of the American History Theater have been stretched so that it is no longer exclusively a theater about American History, so much as it is a theater of Americans performing historic dramas.
The theater had its inception in 2014 after Robinson, a combat Army veteran with three tours in Afghanistan to her credit, took a class at Palomar College from Berry, a professor of drama and history. After doing a project for Berry, who had served as a Navy medic for four years here in San Diego, they decided to collaborate on theater projects that would raise awareness about the issues facing veterans. For Robinson, that mission is closely related to her personal wartime experience. As a result of her combat, she said, she suffered damage to her adrenal glands, which later was diagnosed as Addison’s Disease (whose most famous sufferer was President John F. Kennedy.) She was further disabled by PTSD and fibromyalgia.
The first play that American History Theater did was Waiting for MacArthur, a play about American nurses in the Philippines during the time of Japanese occupation, MacArthur being a reference to General Douglas MacArthur, who promised Filipinos that he would return to liberate their country. Since that play, American History Theater has put on three or two plays per year, and also has sponsored workshops and annual fundraisers.
Robinson said that she and Berry are both history buffs. She said that they recently were alarmed when reading a report that most millennials have very little knowledge or understanding about the Holocaust.
“Because of my passion regarding social awareness and education, we decided that Diary of Anne Frank would be our opening play for 2019,” Robinson said. Knowledge of the Holocaust must be perpetuated, she said. “What the Jews went through, the Holocaust, it can’t die. The world needs to know what can happen through division. Division can lead to horrible things—the Holocaust being the most horrible of the last 100 years. We Americans worked hard during World War II to pull together to defeat evil – Hitler was evil through and through. This story (Anne Frank’s) is so important!” Rose Schindler, a survivor of Auschwitz, is scheduled to participate in a cast talk-back following the last performance April 28.
The 13-member cast, directed by Melissa Malloy and stage managed by Leviticus Padilla, also includes Kellen Gold as Margot Frank; Floyd Strayer Sr. as Otto Frank; Emma Rotella as Edith Frank; David Janisch as Herman Van Daan; Lolly Boroff as Petronella Van Daan; Jena Joyce as Miep Gies; Eric Trigg as Mr. Kraler; Adam Lightfoot as Mr. Dussel, and Leviticus Padilla, Pete Zanko, and Eric Trigg as Nazi soldiers.
Tickets sell for $20, with seniors, students, and military entitled to a $5 discount. Tickets may be reserved by clicking here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-diary-of-anne-frank-tickets-58302814287?ref=ecount
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com