Research-performance; a project conceived and directed by Firenza Guidi, produced in collaboration with the resident theater company ElanFrantoio and the third-year students of the Cerreto Guidi and Vinci Comprehensive Schools
Who could have imagined that the simple words of a thirteen-year-old girl would shape the cinematic and literary imagination for decades to come? The Diary of Anne Frank, now a literary classic, is first and foremost a testimony to the transition from childhood to adolescence, from the innocence of a child’s world—where evil does not exist—to the torn world of adulthood.
By weaving together connections between the history studied in school, the recent trip of 300 thirteen-year-olds to the Struthof concentration camp and Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, the Annex project, with the performance *At Anne Frank’s House*, creatively gathers and juxtaposes the images, impressions, sensations, and real or imagined whispers of the students, along with their words written on the bus, in the heat of the moment, after each visit. Each student’s diary will blend with the one written 70 years earlier by their contemporary, Anne.
Putting its Renaissance past aside for a moment, the section of the Fucecchio Museum in the historic center will become Anne Frank’s house for two weeks. But that’s not all. The audience participating in the performance will embark on a real journey that will allow them to enter, through a back door in the basement, the city of Amsterdam and then climb up narrow stairs to the living quarters and the attic where Anne Frank, her family, and the Van Pels family remained in hiding for more than two years.
The vision behind the performance is to create for the audience a “world” as close as possible to what the students experienced during their study and travel. The performance is a game of painting, not with brushes, but with the human element. In fact, the students themselves will be the protagonists of the show. They will create a tapestry of connections and sensations, of colors and sounds, of scents and footsteps heard with bated breath, as if, by silently pushing the creaking bookcase-door on the first floor, it were to become a veritable time machine, catapulting the audience from the bustling clamor of life and the city below into the timeless silence and mystery of the secret attic.
When
January 20, 2014 – January 28, 2014
Performances through Tuesday, January 28, at the following times: weekdays at 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM; holidays at 3:00 PM, 5:00 PM, 7:00 PM, and 9:00 PM.
Where
Civic Museum – Temporary Exhibitions Section – Fucecchio
Contact
For information and reservations: info@elanfrantoio.org | 345 1619992
