The drama of a young Jewish girl in Amsterdam, Holland, who hid with her family from the Nazis for two years hasn’t lost its power to move readers and audiences in the six decades after the girl, Anne Frank, died in a German concentration camp.

It was enough to draw the interest of longtime Waco Civic Theatre actor Dave Verdery, who picked it over another personal favorite, Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys,” as a directing job. It led young actress Maddy Tinney to audition for a role she feels prepared for after years of history fair research. And although the WCT production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” doesn’t open its two-weekend run until Friday, the theater already has sold more than 100 tickets to area middle school and university students.

“Yes, it’s a sad show, but there’s something about the story that’s inspiring. It’s sad and inspiring,” Verdery said, finding inspiration in the fact that others were willing to risk their lives to help the Franks. “There were so many unsung heroes who did their part to hide the Franks.”

The WCT production is dedicated to Dutch citizen Miep Gies, who helped hide the Frank family, but preserved Anne’s diary, giving it to her father after the war. He published it in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. Gies died Jan. 11 at the age of 100. “Without her, there would be no ‘Diary,’ ” Verdery noted.

Verdery said he wasn’t alone in attraction to the material: After pre-Christmas auditions, many of his actors showed up for their first rehearsal on Jan. 4 with most of their lines already memorized.

Sixteen young women tried out for the part of Anne at the December audition held at Waco’s Temple Rodof Shalom. Verdery whittled that number down to four that he matched with his ensemble to see how well they meshed. “Maddy Tinney just stood out and stood out,” the director said of the Waco High student.

For Tinney, 15, playing Anne Frank represented a stage role whose background story and historical context already were familiar territory.

“I’ve studied the Holocaust for four years,” Tinney said. “So I knew pretty much everything about (Anne Frank’s) story.”

Performing in a set simulating the Franks’ cramped, secret existence wasn’t a problem — acting in school and community productions of “Steel Magnolias,” “Annie,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Alice in Wonderland” gave her plenty of experience with stage limitations, she said — but portraying a character who grows older and matures in the course of the play was something new.

“It can be (hard to play), but the director showed me how,” she said.

Hermann van Daan (Frank Bugh, left) welcomes Mr. Dussel (Win Emmons) to an attic hiding place and the company of Miep Gies (Cathy Hanes, from left), Victor Kraler (Clifton Grasham-Reeves), Anne Frank (Maddie Tinney) and Petra van Daan (Laura Meier-Marx) in the Waco Civic Theatre production “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

Verdery will use another one of the four Anne auditioners, Katie Roberts, as a non-performing understudy — one who performs only if the principal actor cannot — but gave her a show of her own, allowing her to play Anne in a Jan. 19 rehearsal performance.

In the play adapted from Frank’s diary, the young Jewish girl shares her feelings about her family, mother Edith (Terri Bugh) and sister Margot (Katie Drake); the van Daan family, Hermann (Frank Bugh), Petra (Laura Meier-Marx), young Peter (Will Mormino) and Mr. Dussel (Win Emmons), who share the secret hiding place with the Franks. She dreams of freedom, thinks of love, wonders about life.

Directing the 10-person cast is a different hat for Verdery to wear; the veteran radio producer is best known to Central Texas audiences as an actor. Verdery says he hung up his acting shoes with last year’s “Brigadoon” at the WCT after an earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. “I’ve been directed by some of the best directors in Temple, Waco and Clifton theater, and I wanted to give something back,” he said.

Friendships and contacts made during his years in community theater helped him with producing “Diary.” Bobby Abrahams, whom Verdery calls “one of the best directors in the city,” constructed the Gerard Schank-designed one-and-a-half floor set that contains most of the action and also plays Anne’s father Otto. Lighting designer Steve Schmidt commuted from Clifton to light the show.

Verdery’s own media experience played a part, too, in the multimedia slide show and music that complements the onstage drama with historical detail.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” opens Friday and runs under two hours with no intermission.

choover@wacotrib.com

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