Study Guide

Who are the actors?

High school students at Harborside Academy were cast in the audio version of The Diary of Anne Frank. Many of these students have an interest in theatre and have participated as actors or stage managers in plays and musicals at our school. Most members of the cast also enrolled and completed drama classes at Harborside. They are so excited to perform for you and to help KUSD students experience this play in a new way!

How did we make this recording?

Cast members were given scripts to read on their own, to become better acquainted with the story, to understand their characters, and to be familiar with the text. Each cast member highlighted their script before we met for our first rehearsal. Due to COVID and a quarantine, our rehearsals were cut short, but we persevered! While students did not have to memorize their scripts, they did need to know and understand what they were saying. We rehearsed together twice before recording the final version. In those rehearsals we read through the play together, stopping for questions about pacing (how fast or slow lines should be and when they need to overlap), word pronunciation, and most importantly, inflection (how to express the mood and feelings of the characters).

Students came together on a Friday morning and we recorded the script with a professional sound company. Each student wore a mic so that their voices could be recorded and mixed into the final version you are listening to in your classroom. Even though the play is about two hours and 20 minutes long to read, it took us about five hours to record! We stopped if someone stumbled on a word, or said the wrong thing accidentally . . . or if there was a siren outside or some sort of noise we weren’t expecting. A recording project takes a great amount of time and patience. We were so excited when the last words on the page were read!

How is reading a play different from seeing one?

Plays are truly meant to be seen; they are not easily read like a novel. When you read a play, it actually ends up taking more time than it would when you are sitting in a theater to see it. This is due to the fact that there are a lot of instructions within a play. These are called stage directions. Stage directions are there to help the director and actors understand what the audience will need to SEE: the action that happens on stage. For example, the stage directions might read that Mrs. Frank is setting up the dinner table. It may describe everything she is putting down on the table and what else is happening in the scene at the same time. When you read these directions, it takes time. When you are performing the play, the audience would SEE all of these actions happening and lines in the play could overlap those actions; thus making the action of the play swifter and the pacing a little faster.

Stage directions are very important in the reading of a play because it allows you, as a student, to imagine what the play looks like. They should never be skipped over in a reading. Most plays that are acted out start with the actors sitting in a circle or around a table doing something called a table read. Table reads are where everyone working on the play would hear it for the first time. The stage manager would usually read all of the stage directions at that time.

What did we do differently?

As you read the play, you might notice that once in a while our stage manager skips over some words or a line. In order to make the best experience for you, our audience, we sometimes chose to edit the stage directions. Instead of the stage manager saying, “startled, amused,” before an actor’s line, we had the actor use their voices to sound startled and amused. You’ll notice that many times throughout the play. We did this because it took a little bit of time off the length of the play and also because our actors could showcase their talents by using their voices to display a variety of emotions.

We also added sound effects into the play to give it a more realistic feel and because sound and music really help add to the mood of a play. Think about a scary movie; we often feel nervous in a movie because the music underneath the scene indicates that something bad is about to happen, or perhaps we hear the creaking of a door or some footsteps coming up the stairs. These sounds all help tell the story and make us feel suspense! That makes the movie more exciting and realistic. We added sound effects into The Diary of Anne Frank for this reason: to make you feel like you are actually there with them, to help you use your imagination more fully, and to feel those moments of suspense.

How did we add in the sound effects?

After we finished our recording, the talented sound team at Backyard Dream Studios put together a first draft for the director (Hi, that’s me!) to listen to. The sound effects are copyrighted specifically for the play and were purchased to use for this special project. You may be surprised to learn that adding the sound effects in took even longer than doing the recording with the actors! Many hours were spent listening to the audio of the actors talking and then figuring out at exactly what time a sound effect should happen. For example, in Scene 3 of the play, the stage directions say “. . . as they hear the sound of an automobile coming to a screeching stop in the street below . . .” The sound effect for the car screeching to a stop was then timed to perfectly match with the stage manager reading that very line. When all of the sound effects were finished, the sound production team edited those effects into the existing audio file. After a few changes and a final listen through, we have our finished product! How many different sounds did you hear while listening to this play? Can you name them all?