Leah Tutman (pictured above right), who played Anne Frank in the 2007 Pisces Moon Young Company production of And then they came for me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank, will portray her once again -- this time in a stage play written by her brother, Avi, as part of their multi-tiered production Heart and Mind. Heart and Mind, inspired by Anne Frank's short but powerfully influential life, combines historically-based narrative scenes with a film chronicle of the Tutman family'svisits to places like Anne Frank's former apartment and the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp in Germany, where Anne and her sister, Margot, died. Also included are interviews with
people that Anne Frank knew, notably Eva Schloss, who figured prominently in And then they came for me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank. Schloss grew up with Frank in Amsterdam. Her mother married Anne's
father, Otto, after all three survived their internment in
concentration camps. In And then they came for me, Schloss's videotaped interviews and those of Ed Silverberg, another childhood friend of
Anne Frank's, were interposed with staged scenes from
their lives during World War II. The Tutman family became strongly involved with And then they came for me, contributing a great deal to its success. Leah created a moving, dramatic portrait of Anne Frank, mother Miryam led post-performance discussions
about the anti-Semitic harassment she endured while growing up in her native
Russia and father Adam gathered more than 100 people from the family's community, friends and work colleagues to see the play. As with many Pisces Moon productions, the run of And then they came for me was accompanied by a strong educational component, consisting of a display of documents and artifacts from both Anne Frank's life and the Holocaust, a 30-page study guide written by company Artistic Director Susan Myer Silton, and post-show audience talkbacks featuring Holocaust victims. To enhance the actors' preparation, they were steeped in the play's social, religious and historical context, as well as the horror and implications of genocide, both then and now.
With the play completed, the family devoted themselves to learning more about Anne Frank, to whom Leah bears a strong resemblance. They began to read all they could find about her, and made plans to commemorate her 80th birthday with visits to relevant sites in Europe and Jerusalem. The trip soon evolved from a re-creation of Frank's life's journey to an edifying, significant, on-camera journey of their own. The resulting footage, as well as Avi's play, looks at hatred, prejudice and destiny from the perspective of both the past and the present, comparing today's
political and social environments to that of the early 1940s.
More than anything else, Heart and Mind was guided by the ideals of Anne Frank: generosity, courage, love, happiness, peace, humanity, and faith in divine providence and goodness of people. As Miryam and Adam describe, "It is these ideals which our teens rely on when they explore other burning questions. That's what makes this play so different from all other plays about Anne Frank. We think bringing out her ideals may be the ultimate tribute to Anne's: 'to be useful or bring joy to people, and to go on living even after my death...'" For more information, please email mtutman@yahoo.com
