About the author
Born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Anne Frank emigrated with her parents to Amsterdam in 1933. When the German Wehrmacht invaded and occupied the Netherlands in 1940, Anne Frank's family, together with four others, hid in Otto Frank's company house. During this time, 13-year-old Anne confided her feelings and thoughts to a diary, in which she recorded her daily life in hiding and her fear of being discovered. The diary ended on 1 August 1944: three days later, the Jewish inhabitants of the last house were denounced and arrested, and the Frank family was deported to Auschwitz, where they were separated. Anne Frank and her sister Margot died seven months later in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her mother Edith died in Auschwitz on 6 January 1945. Otto Frank, Anna and Margot's father, is the only survivor from the last house. After the war, he received his daughter's diary and published extracts from it for the first time in 1947. To date, the full version of Anne Frank's diary has been published in more than 80 languages.
Vinko Möderndorfer about the play
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most important texts of the 20th century. And not only because of the calamities that the Jewish people have endured, that Anne Frank's family has endured and not survived. The diary is also an important work of literature. And the little girl Anne is an exceptionally gifted observer of life and human character.
We can sense a great talent for writing in her work. Anna committed herself to writing at a very early age. It was her desire, her ambition, her joy, her talent, which she felt was her personal mission.
Reading the diary, one also wonders how many talents, how many Mozarts, Beethovens, Michelangelos... how many great writers, painters, can be killed by genocidal politics. And not only talents, but how many lives, and every life is a universe, have been lost because of the foolish hatred generated by politics. Not only in the past. Even today.
The Diary of Anne Frank is an extremely relevant work. Young and talented people are living on the brink of life and death even today. The diary of a young girl who spent two years in hiding and eventually died a horrific death as a result of betrayal will remind us that even today we are constantly living on the brink of the Holocaust. The younger generations, in particular, should be more aware of this. That is why Mini teater's decision to include this text in its theatre programme is one of the most important repertoire decisions in Slovenian theatre.
Dramatisation was a very challenging job. I wrote it from the moment Robert Waltl offered me the director's chair. I don't know how many times I read the diary before I finally found the right form of dramatisation. I tried to keep the form of the diary, despite the dialogue scenes. It was necessary to shape the dramatic scenes and at the same time to remain faithful to the impression of the characters that the young writer presented in her diary entries.
I was particularly interested in how two very different families, with three teenagers, live their hidden lives in a claustrophobic space, constantly exposed to fear for their lives.
I have extracted the most important and intense scenes from the text, where the anguish of living together and the conflicting human characters, forced into an impossible situation by hatred, are revealed. Father Otto Frank is the person who tries to maintain optimism at all costs in the increasingly nervous life of two families. Otto Frank fights against sadness, against all the ills of living together, no matter how much he himself suffers in the process. He is an extremely strong personality who can be an example of humanity and kindness in a cruel time.
In specific situations, the most ordinary things of life (washing, bathing, toileting, etc.) become the most severe ordeals. But Anna is also a very lively girl. She is cheerful, curious, witty... In the extremes of life people fight against evil and for survival also with humour. I also found this important in our dramatisation.
The Diary of Anne Frank is a vivisection of human relationships in specific circumstances. But it is also a vivisection of growing up. The birth of love. It is, in fact, the story of Romeo and Juliet at the time of the Holocaust and the European apocalypse. It is the story of how love wants to conquer death. But it is also a story of disillusionment. It is a story of fear. A story of a future stolen from millions of people.
Somewhere in her diary, Anna says: "It makes me sick to think that all those who were so close to me, my classmates, are now at the mercy of the worst rabble that ever existed. Why? Because we are different? Are we really different? Because we are all human. People who feel pain, fear, love... I don't understand, I really don't understand. What happened to the people?!"
We need to question this also today.
We must always ask ourselves questions like Anne Frank, just so perhaps history will not repeat itself in the most horrible way.
Anna's story is our story.
Are we aware enough of this?
Vinko Möderndorfer
About the director
Vinko Möderndorfer (1958) is a writer, poet, essayist, playwright and director. He graduated in directing from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. He started working as a director at the Experimental Theatre Glej in Ljubljana, where he was also the artistic director for a while. He has subsequently worked with various theatres and as a radio, television and film director. To date, he has directed more than a hundred theatre and opera performances. In 2003 he was awarded the title of Assistant Professor of Theatre Directing. He began his literary career in the second half of the 1970s. He first turned to poetry, and then continued in all areas of literary creation - from prose to drama, essays, radio plays, film scripts, children's and young people's literature. He has published more than sixty works in prose, poetry, drama and essays in book form. His professional articles and essays deal with theatre directing, dramaturgy and acting, as well as current social events. Among the works he has produced in recent years are the poetry collection for children: Pesmi in pesmičice (Poems and Little Songs), the novels for young people: Kot v filmu (As in the Movie). Kit na plaži (Whale on the Beach) and Jaz sem Andrej (I am Andrej), and for adults novels: Balzacov popek (Balzac's bellybutton), Konec zgodbe (The End of the Story), Druga preteklost (Another Past), the novella collection Navodila za srečo (Instructions for Happiness), the essayist work Ljudomrznik na tržnici…
From the reviews
"Möderndorfer's direction skilfully crafts the alternation of Anna's narrative with the acted scenes, which involve the entire ensemble (who are also forced to manoeuvre their suitcases). Anna is understandably the most layered character. Gaja Filač, as the title protagonist, successfully diversifies Anna's portrait with a range of feelings, all of which, depending on the situation, often move in extremes. The others, Saša Pavlin Stošić (Margot Frank), Medea Novak (Edith Frank), Tadej Pišek (Otto Frank), Barbara Vidovič (Mrs Van Daan), Aleš Kranjec (Mr Van Daan) and Timotej Novaković (Peter Van Daan), each follow her in their expressive gestures with equal skill."(...) "Since the Diary is necessarily also a catalogue of Anna's reflections and feelings, the others are necessarily more "flattened" than she is. Above all, because we see them through Anna's eyes, they are usually rationalised in one character trait, and this is something that the cast as a whole grasps very well." Blaž Gselman, Veza Sigledal
