This year’s winter play, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” had a successful opening night and following performances.

The play covers the timeline and story of Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands over the course of two years. The student actors portrayed the events of Anne Frank’s life as she recounted her experience throughout the pages of her diary that she kept at the time.

Megan Rakers (11), playing Anne, recounted her experience of inhabiting the role.

“For the first couple of rehearsals, we all sat down and did a lot of research about our characters, websites and the house of Anne Frank,” Rakers said.

Additionally, to prepare for their roles, the cast embarked on a research project to understand the depth and severity of the events within the production. The cast created an educational display for the audience in order to inform them of the cast’s understanding of their roles.

“With this play, we needed to not only jump into the role and character, but honor and respect [them],” Rakers said.

Including these reports and articles in their production process added to the experience and gave the cast a way to be in touch with a sensitive topic.

“We made sure to take the time to go in depth about not only the story and who these people were, but about themselves and what their characteristics were. Every little detail about them,” Rakers added.

The cast put together an informational board to be on display in the lobby prior to the performance. The boards will provide character descriptions, stress the importance of the plot line, and prepare the audience for certain scenes taking place.

“Personally, my family, my grandparents, talked to me a lot about the war…By talking to them [about the war] and my ancestors in the war, I was able to get not only their perspective but our ancestors,” said Anika Urbonas (12), portraying Edith Frank.

The cast focused on the quality of life during the Holocaust. Covering mainly the misconceptions that are shown and interpreted in the modern day.

“We’re putting in the facts and letting people know that this did really happen during all of their time in the annex,” according to Dylan Tehrani (11), playing Mr. Van Daan.