CARDINAL ANNOUNCES ALL HOOSIER CAST
FOR RIVETING NEW DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
1st Subscription Season launches with gripping new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank
September 12th – 28th / Waldron Auditorium
Cardinal Stage is pleased to announce an all-star cast of Indiana-based actors for its 2008-09 season-launching production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Wendy Kesselman’s sparkling new adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play runs September 12th – 28th at the Waldron Arts Center Auditorium. Tickets are available at the Sunrise Box Office (114 E Kirkwood) or online at www.cardinalstage.org.
The play is based on the diary of a young Jewish girl who comes of age while in hiding with her family in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. It's a story the world knows by heart, but Kesselman’s recent adaptation incorporates material left out of the celebrated 1955 play, including recently released entries from Anne’s original diary. The show remains funny and heartwarming, but the new version has richer, more complex relationships and a truer sense of what the families went through, and what Anne, in particular, experienced, in the now famous secret annex.
Listing Anne Frank as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, Time Magazine declared that, “the reason for her immortality was literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer.” Cardinal artistic director Randy White agrees, adding that, “Anne wrote in her diary that she wanted to be remembered as a writer. We chose Wendy Kesselman’s new adaptation because it’s a stage adaptation that puts Anne’s remarkable prose front and center.”
Cardinal’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank will be complimented by extensive education and outreach opportunities including a public talkback on September 14th a teacher-training workshop in conjunction with Indiana University's Jewish and Germanic Studies Programs. The workshop will introduce 30 - 40 Indiana literature, drama, history, and social studies teachers to the history of The Holocaust in the Netherlands, the compositional and publishing histories of Anne Frank's diary, the various media that have since adapted the diary (theater, film, TV, fiction, etc.), and the broader public image of Anne. The workshop is scheduled for Wednesday, September 17th and Cardinal will soon announce the stellar line-up of workshop leaders, including leading American and visiting Dutch Anne Frank experts.
