Review Fix chats with playwright Monica Bauer, who discusses her upcoming production “Anne Frank in the Gaza Strip.â€
About The Production:
ISRAELIS AND MUSLIMS AND REPUBLICANS, OH MY! ANNE FRANK IN THE GAZA STRIP, WRITTEN BY MONICA BAUER, IS HEADED TO THE 2017 PLANET CONNECTION THEATRE FESTIVITY, WHICH RUNS JUNE 12 – JULY 9, 2017 AT THE CLEMENTE, 107 SUFFOLK STREET, NYC.
Playwright Monica Bauer‘s parable echoing the Wizard of Oz puts us in a world where Trump-supporters are the ruling majority and calling every tune. What will they think when Dorothy, the school drama teacher, casts a production of the Diary of Anne Frank with the title character played by a Muslim?? There’s no place like home! This open-hearted political satire is directed by Shaun Peknic (Assoc. Director, ONCE, on Broadway); and features Andrew Dahreddine, David M. Farrington, Aizzah Fatima, Bruce Jones, John Fico, Becca Lish, and Lauren D. Salvo.
“Anne Frank†performs June 24 @ 3:45 PM; June 25 @ 4:30 PM; July 2 @ 7:15 PM; July 6 @ 9:00 PM; July 8 @ 9:00 PM; and July 9 @ 1:00 PM. For tickets, visit PlanetConnections.org or call 866-811-4111.
Planet Connections Theatre Festivity are multiple theater, film and music festivals. Planet Connections’ artists use their work to shed light on causes that matter and inspire audiences to get involved. All of PCTF’s artists raise awareness for an organization or topic of their own selection.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Monica Bauer: I often get an image or idea in my head that sits in the back of my mind for a time, sometimes years, before it begins to grow into a play. In this case, I had written a song about Anne Frank as a modern child of war 15 years ago, and that ripened into one idea: a young girl, traumatized by war, who, under hypnosis, speaks in Dutch and claims to be Anne Frank. That girl turned into a Palestinian girl, and I tried to write a play just about that. But comedy kept creeping in, and then the Wizard of Oz showed up, and the girl who thinks she is Anne Frank became part of a play within a play!
Review Fix: What makes this different or special?
Bauer: Last year, I found out through DNA analysis that I am 71% Ashkenazi.I’m adopted, and was raised in a Polish Catholic family, so this has been an adjustment! It’s a different thing for me to write about Anne Frank and Israelis and Muslims now. And I’ve been revising the play in the first months of the Trump administration, in the shadow of the Muslim Travel Ban and the rise in Islamophobia. I have many lovely friends who happen to be Muslim, and Trump makes me crazy. So the politics of the play, and the chance to stick it to Trump through comedy, make it special right now.
Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through this process?
Bauer: This is the most complex play structure I have ever used, and at first I wasn’t sure I could pull off a play within a play within a play. And like the Wizard of Oz, we see some characters in the first scene in a realistic role, and in the later scenes that same person plays a different role that carries the same personality traits! But I rediscovered how much joy I could have in political comedy, and that carried me through and made the structure less an impediment and more of a surprisingly easy tool. It reminded me how much I love to make an audience laugh and think ad the same time.
Review Fix: How does it feel to be a part of something like this?
Bauer: I’ve been associated with Planet Connections before, and was a finalist in their Playwrights for a Cause competition this year. so it feels like family. I divide my time now between living in sunny Arizona and coming to New York for theater work, so it’s exciting for me to feel at home with this great group of artists at Planet Connections.
Review Fix: What are your ultimate goals for this production and for the future?
Bauer: We hope to begin raising money to take the play next year to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play was accepted by one of the Big Four theaters, but we didn’t have the money or the organization to take a company of 7 actors there this August. If we have a strong run, maybe this cast will want to help us raise the money to go next August. And there’s always the hope someone will produce it Off Broadway.
Review Fix: What do you think your audiences will enjoy the most?
Bauer: When most people think about a play with Anne Frank in the title, they don’t imagine comedy. We have a lot of surprises up our sleeves! I think the audience will fall in love with these characters, and be delighted by the clever Trump bashing we manage to sneak in along the way. And it’s in the best spirit of Anne Frank, who wrote that “despite everything, I still think people are good at heart.” It’s certainly more of a laugh riot than that other play about Middle East peace, Oslo.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Bauer: Â I’m developing a two-actor adaptation of one of my most successful plays, which originally was staged with five actors on stage: “My Occasion of Sin.” The new title is “Riot Music, 1969,” and it’s a drama inspired by real events; the killing of a 14 year old black girl by a white policeman. I guess there’s something about young girls in danger that keeps coming up in my plays. I love writing comedy, but I’m equally at home making people cry.
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