Francine Prose to Present Author Talk on Anne Frank at Westport Country Playhouse, Sept. 19

Critically acclaimed novelist Francine Prose, writer of the recently published Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, will present an author talk and book signing, on Sunday, September 19, 3 p.m., at Westport Country Playhouse. Prose will speak about her book, followed by an interview with David Kennedy, Playhouse associate artistic director, and a Q&A with the audience. Produced in collaboration with the Westport Public Library, the event is free-of-charge, open to the public, and registration is required at www.westportlibrary.org or 203-291-4818. Seating at the Playhouse is unreserved.

Prose's talk is designed to provide a wider context in which to assess the Playhouse's upcoming staging of The Diary of Anne Frank, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman and directed by Gerald Freedman, playing September 28 through October 30. Making an impassioned argument for Anne Frank's literary genius, Prose's non-fiction effort tells the story of Frank's refuge, the discovery of her diary after her death and the global phenomenon that it eventually became. The New York Times described Prose's book as "an impressively far-reaching critical work, an elegant study both edifying and entertaining."

A perennial international best-seller since its first publication after the Second World War, Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl has long been revered as both a precocious coming-of-age memoir and a profoundly moving testament of the Holocaust. Few readers realize, though, that the diary is not simply the innocent and spontaneous outpourings of a teenage girl. In the months before she and her family were discovered in their Amsterdam hiding place and sent to Auschwitz, Anne Frank heavily revised her journal, clearly intending to publish it someday.

The diary that has come down to us is a "consciously crafted work of literature," said Prose. In Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, this acclaimed novelist, critic and teacher lends her discriminating critical voice to a deft analysis of the book and a careful consideration of its literary and historical significance.

Prose reconsiders how Anne Frank's diary-and its copious interpretations and misrepresentations over the past 60 years-has both shaped and been shaped by forces beyond its purview. The fame of the diary grew exponentially after it was adapted into a Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play and Oscar-winning movie. Prose chronicles the sometimes-sordid journey of that adaptation, with a behind-the-scenes drama that included lawsuits between Otto Frank and the diary's obsessed champion, Meyer Levin, and public squabbling among some of the seminal theater people of the day, including Lillian Hellman, Cheryl Crawford, Kermit Bloomgarden, Elia Kazan and Garson Kanin.

As a teacher of writing and literature, Prose also gives careful consideration to the ways in which Anne Frank's diary has been and can be taught in the classroom and how this deceptively simple document can open the door for studying the Holocaust and other genocides.

"How astonishing that a teenager could have written so intelligently and so movingly about a subject that continues to overwhelm the adult imagination," said Prose, who wrote her trenchant book with the approval and support of the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam, as well as the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family.

Francine Prose grew up in Brooklyn and attended Radcliffe College, where she majored in English literature and from which she graduated in 1968. She briefly attended graduate school in medieval English literature, then left Harvard to live for a year in India, where she began to write her first novel, Judah the Pious, published when she was 26.

Since then, Prose has written 14 novels, among them Household Saints, which was made into a 1993 film and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them was a New York Times Bestseller.

Her stories, reviews, cultural criticism and essays have appeared in national publications. Prose is the recipient of many honors, including The Edith Wharton Lifetime Achievement Award. She is currently a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College and has taught at Harvard and other universities. She was one of the first recipients of a Director's Fellowship at the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers and is a former president of PEN American Center. Prose, the mother of two grown sons, lives in New York City with her husband, the painter and illustrator Howard Michels.

Westport Country Playhouse, a not-for-profit theater, serves as a treasured home for the performing arts and is a cultural landmark for Connecticut. Under the artistic direction of Mark Lamos and management direction of Michael Ross, the Playhouse creates quality productions of new and classic plays that enlighten, enrich and engage a diverse community of theater lovers, artists and students. The Playhouse's rich history dates back to 1931, when New York theater producer Lawrence Langner created a Broadway-quality stage within an 1830s tannery. The Playhouse quickly became an established stop on the New England "straw hat circuit" of summer stock theaters. Now celebrating its 80th season, Westport Country Playhouse has produced more than 700 plays, 36 of which later transferred to Broadway, most recently the world premiere of Thurgood and a revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town with Paul Newman, and in earlier years Come Back, Little Sheba with Shirley Booth, The Trip to Bountiful with Lillian Gish, and Butterflies Are Free with Keir Dullea and Blythe Danner. For its artistic excellence, the Playhouse received a 2005 Governor's Arts Award and a 2000 "Connecticut Treasure" recognition. It was also designated as an Official Project of Save America's Treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is entered on the Connecticut State Register of Historic Places. Following a multi-million dollar renovation completed in 2005, the Playhouse transformed into a year-round, state-of-the-art producing theater with its original charm and character preserved. In addition to a full season of theatrical productions, the Playhouse serves as a community resource, presenting educational programming and workshops; a children's theater series; symposiums; music; films; and readings.

Westport Country Playhouse's five-play 2010 season: She Loves Me, a romantic musical comedy, with book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, directed by Mark Lamos, April 20 - May 15; Dinner with Friends, a comic drama by Donald Margulies, directed by David Kennedy, Playhouse associate artistic director, June 1 through 19; Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, a play of luminous beauty and rare power, featuring Dana Ivey, directed by Mark Lamos, July 6 through July 24; I Do! I Do, an endearing musical, with book and lyrics are by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, directed by Susan H. Schulman, August 10 through August 28; and The Diary of Anne Frank, a timeless and powerful classic, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman, directed by Gerald Freedman, September 28 through October 16.

For more information or ticket purchases, call the box office at (203) 227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529, or visit 25 Powers Court, off Route 1, Westport. Tickets may be purchased online at www.westportplayhouse.org. Stay connected to the Playhouse on Facebook (Westport Country Playhouse) and/or follow on Twitter (@WCPlayhouse).

For more information on the Westport Public Library, visit www.westportlibrary.org.

 

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