Vilniaus Kamerinis Teatras, October – December: 

When Men Played God!
The Story of Anne Frank

A conversation with Alicia Gian, co-director of Kai žmonės vaidino Dievą!
Emily Šaras, Associate Editor 

October 21, 22, 23, 28, 29.  November 11, 12.  December 20.  18:30
Vilniaus Kamerinis Teatras (Vilnius Chamber Theatre)
TICKETS: www.bilietai.lt
Sponsored by the United States Embassy, Vilnius

Anne Frank, the girl who has been the voice for millions of unheard voices from the Holocaust, is being heard in Vilnius for the first time in Lithuania’s history.  In a newly adapted script by Mr. Marius Mačiulis, nine of Vilnius Chamber Theatre's actors will tell the story of family, hope, death and most importantly love.  Co-Director of the production, Ms. Alicia Gian, hopes for the audience to be emotionally moved by the production, and seeks to inspire viewers to “be moved to action - moved to talk about and act upon social injustices that are occurring in our neighborhoods, cities, countries and world today.”  In the words of Anne herself, "How wonderful it is that nobody has to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world" – and the Vilnius Chamber Theatre eagerly anticipates the October 21st  premiere of the production.

Although Ms. Gian has called Vilnius her home for the past four years and is serving as the Artistic Director for the Vilnius Chamber Theatre, she is currently completing her Master’s Degree in Directing and Actor Training at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.  She has won several grants from the United States Embassy in Vilnius for her theatre productions – a Fulbright Grant for her production of Kanarėlė (the story of American singer Peggy Lee) and the prestigious Smith-Mundt Grant for her production of Meilė be akcento (Love Without Accent).  This experience in directing the story of Anne Frank in Vilnius, however, marks a new highlight of her career.  Ms. Gian recalls her experience reading The Diary of Anne Frank as a 13 year-old girl, and to this day she remembers it as “one of the most memorable and moving literary experiences” of her entire life.  “I felt that I was reading the diary of a friend, and now I feel as if I am telling the story of a friend.  I am not the only one who has had such an experience.”  And she is absolutely right: The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most widely read books internationally, second only to the Bible, and it is inarguably the most well-known piece of literature about the Holocaust.

The conceptualization of this production began to formulate almost a year and a half ago when Ms. Gian was approached by the American Center at the United States Embassy to direct a Jewish Heritage theatre project, in commemoration of the proclamation of 2011 as the year of Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Remembrance in Lithuania by the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas).  “The idea was to create a piece of theatre that would pay homage to the victims of the Holocaust as well as serve as an educational tool to promote further discourse on the topic of tolerance” says Ms. Gian.  “As a person of non-Jewish heritage, I felt that it was very important to choose a play with which I had a very personal connection.” 

The most intriguing thing about this production, however, is that the themes behind Ms. Gian’s and Mr. Mačiulis’s realization of Anne Frank’s story is that the work extends into a realm of human rights and compassion, beyond the obvious themes race and tolerance.  Ms. Gian notes,

“Anne Frank wrote in her diary, ‘…if we were liberated today, I would go back to school and I'd hope that they would see me as just a girl and not just Jewish.’  I think this is one of the most poignant lines in the entire book.  Yes, this is a story about what happened to a group of people who happened to be Jewish. The fierce documentation by the Jewish people of these crimes against humanity has enabled the global community to recognize and confront acts of injustice.”  When history is forgotten, it tends to repeat itself.  Productions like The Diary of Anne Frank are what I consider to be preventative productions - productions which stay in the social consciousness in order to inspire a sense of social responsibility, so that the subject matter may never be forgotten and never repeated.  Within that mindset, our vision is to share this story with as many communities as possible in Lithuania and in the Spring of 2012, the first national tour of "The Diary of Anne Frank" will take place in five different cities across the nation.

Unfortunately, we cannot say that since the Holocaust that genocide has not has not occurred. It has happened recently in places such as Cambodia, North Korea, Tibet, the Darfur conflict in Sudan, and Rwanda to name just a few. It is even happening right now in Somalia. Lithuanians themselves have also been the victims of genocide.”

The title of the production, literally translated as “When Men Played God,” was the brilliant result of a collaboration between the co-directors.  “In the beginning stages of rehearsal,” remembers Ms. Gian, “I felt that the play was more of a drama than a tragicomedy and he felt otherwise.  I also had reservations about using the word comedy next to the word Holocaust.”  But Ms. Gian’s research into the origins of the genre revealed the basis of the tragicocomedia genre, a term defined Roman playwright Plataus as a play in which gods and men or masters and slaves change places.  “When Hilter and the Nazi party decided that certain people were worthy of life and others were not,” says Ms. Gian, “and they controlled others on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual-orientation, or physical and mental limitations, they assumed the role of God.” 

“Also, in more modern interpretations of the word, tragicomedy, it is often described as a play in which laughter is the last human response left to an absurd or despairing fate” says Ms. Gian.  “The element of humor in this production is very important.  Humor is a survival tactic.  The brain actually pauses during laughter, functioning as an automatic stress-management tool.  This is the body's way of keeping mental balance.  For two years, these people hid in an attic in Nazi-occupied Holland.  The stress that they were living in was unimaginable and they used laughter and humor to help each other survive each and every day.”

The Vilnius Chamber Theatre promises to take us on a mental voyage of two hours and thirty minutes into the life of a terror that most of us escaped...to share an important part of history in a powerful and accessible way.