{"id":830,"date":"2012-06-11T23:14:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T05:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=830"},"modified":"2012-06-20T12:41:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T18:41:08","slug":"nocca-stage-presents-diary-of-anne-frank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/nocca-stage-presents-diary-of-anne-frank\/","title":{"rendered":"NOCCA Stage presents &#8216;Diary of Anne Frank&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Reviewer, &#8220;Steppin&#8217; Out,&#8221; WYES-TV<\/p>\n<p>Jewish historians will note that of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the world did not put a specific face on but a few. As to survivors, there is <strong>Elie Wiesel<\/strong>, the impassioned voice of reason amidst madness and the late <strong>Simon Wiesenthal<\/strong>, whose efforts to expose and capture the enemies of the Jewish people were extremely effective. But when it comes to victims, the image of the smiling brunette teenager from Amsterdam who wrote entries in a diary while in hiding from the Nazis &#8211; <strong>Anne Frank<\/strong>&#8211; is arguably the most famous.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_832\" style=\"width: 251px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-832\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-832 lazyload\" title=\"The Diary of Anne Frank\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank-241x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank.jpg 350w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 241px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 241\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-832\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-832\" title=\"The Diary of Anne Frank\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank-241x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank-241x300.jpg 241w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Anne_Frank.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-832\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The voice of a young teenager coming of age in a world gone mad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>When classes disband and summer rolls into the <strong>New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts<\/strong> (<strong>NOCCA<\/strong>), the state school for the arts, the faculty and several gifted students open up their campus for what has become an annual cornucopia of stage offerings. In the past the students and faculty have presented such impressive works as \u201c<strong>Violet<\/strong>,\u201d \u201c<strong>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/strong>\u201d and last year\u2019s award-winning \u201c<strong>The Trip to<\/strong> <strong>Bountiful<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The seamless nature of the faculty in the way they integrate with the young student performers is staggering. It is a compliment that many of these gifted, young actors oftentimes outshine their much older, more experienced adult partners, which, given their length and breadth of experience, is not an easy feat.<\/p>\n<p>The summer\u2019s lone offering from the NOCCA Stage Company is the riveting and still very much pertinent \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank.\u201d The play is liberally dramatized from the actual diary entries of the most famous victim of the Holocaust that were discovered by her father <strong>Otto Frank<\/strong> after the war. <strong>Frances Goodrich<\/strong> and <strong>Albert Hackett<\/strong> were responsible for transforming the powerful words of a teenager coming of age in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands into a drama that built tension as it went along.<\/p>\n<p>The names of all of the real life victims were changed and the personalities of several of the characters were made more dramatic for the purposes of moving the piece along.\u00a0 In some cases when fiction made more dramatic sense than what history would attest to as truthful, the fictional retelling was used.<\/p>\n<p>Director <strong>Janet Shea<\/strong> took great pains to follow the script as closely as possible, but made well-conceived theatrical choices for the staff when necessary.<\/p>\n<p>The somber facts of the play are still true to the story. Of all the adults and children hidden away during the war the lone survivor was Otto Frank. That much is made evident at the beginning of the play when we meet Otto Frank (<strong>Silas Cooper<\/strong>) along with two friends \u2013 Miep (recent NOCCA graduate <strong>Holly Setoon<\/strong>) and Mr. Kraler (veteran performer <strong>Joseph Ridolfo<\/strong>) \u2013 who had helped secret him and his family for nearly three years, supplying food and other necessities.<\/p>\n<p>During the course of the play we meet Anne\u2019s other family members: her mother wonderfully portrayed by local actress <strong>Diana Shortes<\/strong> and her sister Margot, played by first-year NOCCA student <strong>Mary Frances Candies<\/strong>. These actresses are quite impressive, especially Shortes,<\/p>\n<p>The remaining cast of characters are all exceptional. Faculty members <strong>Amy Alvarez<\/strong> and <strong>Blake Coheley<\/strong> portray self-obsessed Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan, whose son Peter (recent NOCCA grad <strong>Austin Alleman<\/strong>) becomes an interest of attachment for the title character, played with wonderful exuberance by Benjamin Franklin High School-NOCCA junior student <strong>Mariah Guillmette<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Michael Cahill<\/strong> portrays Mr. Dussel, a man whose character can be\u00a0 mean-spirited and\u00a0 manipulative. He is highly dismissive of his teenage roommate, Anne, whom he regards as a nuisance, despite the fact he is there only because he is in the Franks\u2019 good graces.<\/p>\n<p>Shea insisted that the play end on a serious note, so don\u2019t expect to congratulate the actors at show\u2019s end for their stellar performances. The dead remain the dead and only the survivors of the war are seen before the final curtain. Shea is emphasizing the finality of the Holocaust through the reality of her actors. The play has no curtain calls, but the result for the play is that it spells curtains for almost all of the actors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong>The Diary of Anne Frank<\/strong>\u201d continues on Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 with Sunday matinees as 2:00 until June 24. For more information call 504-940-2875.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"NOCCA%20Stage%20presents%20%27Diary%20of%20Anne%20Frank%27\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[162,8790,8788,161,163],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}