TCR Playbills The Diary of Anne Frank & Bent | Page 28

BEHIND THE STORIES BY LISA KELLY
Anne Frank documented everyday life
in her diary so that the lives of eight
ordinary Jews in Amsterdam in the
1940s would never be forgotten. At
14 years old she recognized that her
little diary could live beyond her. She
said in May 1944, “At long last after a
great deal of reflection I have started
my Achterhuis (Secret Annex), in my
head it is as good as finished.”
Anne wrote because in writing she
felt free. “The nicest part is being
able to write down all my thoughts
and feelings, otherwise I’d absolutely
suffocate.” (16 March 1944) Anne,
and the other residents of the annex
never gave up hope of freedom, and
relied on one another for support.
Their friends Miep Gies and Victor
Kugler (Mr. Kraler in the diary and
play) courageously supplied the
annex residents with food, supplies,
entertainment, and precious glimpses
of the outside world at risk of great
danger to themselves for hiding and
abetting marked Jews.
Otto Frank (the sole survivor from the
annex) displayed a different sort of
courage to fulfill his daughter’s legacy
and published her diary, revealing her
inner thoughts, her teenage dreams
and angst to the world just a few years
after the war in 1947. Anne Frank died
as a teenager in 1945, but her words
remain relevant and even prescient
today, “I know what I want, I have a
goal, an opinion, I have a religion and
love. Let me be myself and then I am
satisfied. I know that I’m a woman,
a woman with inward strength and
plenty of courage.”
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Bent is not a true account, but the
characters in the play represent the
approximately 100,000 men who
were arrested as homosexuals and
the thousands who were imprisoned
and killed in Nazi work camps in
the late 1930s even before the mass
killing of Jews began. Their stories
intersect with real events and people
and, as fictional characters, they stand
on behalf of those who never got the
chance to speak for themselves.
Rudy represents the capriciousness
of the Nazi regime. His horn-
rimmed glasses, a marker of the
“intelligentsia” are his downfall, even
over his race, ethnicity, religion, or
sexual orientation. Max and Horst
are caught in the most unimaginable
circumstances and must make
decisions for their own survival. Their
decisions are not good or bad, just
human. In the end, Max demonstrates
how small acts of resistance protect
identity against those in power,
keeping hope alive.
As Greta sings, “Streets of Berlin will
you cry out when I vanish into air?”
Both The Diary of Anne Frank and
Bent are about giving voices to the
voiceless and how humanity and
love endure in even the most trying
of times. The characters in both plays
are pushed to the limits of human
endurance, and, yet, they don’t give
up on the possibility of love and
human connection.
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