Anne Frank: Parallel Stories

What would Anne Frank’s life have been like had she survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen? What would have happened to the hopes and dreams she wrote about in her diaries? What could she have told us about persecution, about concentration camps? How would she have interpreted the reality of today, the rekindling of antisemitism and new racisms? One thing for sure is that Anne is still a reference point, a looking glass through which teenagers can learn how to see the world and what questions to ask themselves. Anne wrote about herself, about what was happening to a Europe in flames, about Nazism. And in order to confide her fears and thoughts she invented an imaginary friend called Kitty. Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan, part of the Union of European Theatres. It is a remarkably faithful, authentic reconstruction of the interior that will take us right back to 1942. The room contains the objects in Anne’s life, the photographs she covered the walls of her room with, and the notebooks she wrote.