[NEohioPAL] "What Were They Thinking: Archiving Anne Frank"

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

What Were They Thinking:  Archiving Anne Frank

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

 

Playwrights did not begin to describe and interpret the Holocaust experience until a decade after the end of World War II.  It takes time to heal, generate the strength to reflect, and find a clear and steady voice.

 

The most influential and lasting American effort was "The Diary of Anne Frank," the 1956 adaptation of a young girl's journal by two Hollywood screenwriters, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett.  To a large extent, the play's accessibility and popularity stem from its dramatic realism and the alluring thread of Anne's innocence and optimism within the context of the atrocities occurring outside her secret annex.

 

In Europe, theater works related to the Holocaust tend to be more somber and surreal accounts.  Most are full of allegory and metatheatrical artistry, which help audiences in the very countries where the greatest cultural, political and personal devastation occurred confront those harsh realities. 

 

A collection of approximately 600 of these plays can now be accessed through a single, centralized electronic archive - the Holocaust Theater Catalogue - which was created by the National Jewish Theater Foundation (NJTF) and was launched this past October.  

 

For more of this article, go to:  

 

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/article_9a9cccca-9673-11e4-b6dc-43977330841b.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20150108/066d94da/attachment.htm>