Dan's Papers -November 20, 2009 -

Despite a sluggish year in ticket sales, Bay Street Theatre has debuted an ambitious annual theater program aimed at enhancing middle- and high-schools' core curricula.

Approximately 1,500 students from 15 Long Island schools have been trotting through Bay Street's doors last and this week to attend "Literature Live!," Bay Street's first full-scale program of its kind. This year's production, The Diary of Anne Frank, premiered last Monday and will continue through Saturday, November 21. Each weekday performance (open to the public) is followed by a presentation by Holocaust survivor Werner Reich, who was in Auschwitz.

National retail chain Target allocated a large part of its $100,000 donation to Bay Street to "Literature Live!" this year. The BOCES-approved program was designed around the core curriculum of grades 5-12. All the local schools are participating, and students from as far as Lindenhurst are making day trips to see the play. Having just studied the play in class, a group of 30 students in Mary Ann Ferri's eighth-grade English class at Lindenhurst Our Lady of Perpetual Help attended Tuesday's performance. An annual "Literature Live!" production, Ferri says, will bring live theater, a medium that many Long Island students have never before experienced, to venues closer to home than Broadway. "Who knows where it can lead?" she said. "Look at Jerry Seinfeld; he's from Massapequa."

The play was a fitting culmination for Ferri's students, as it brought the saga of the Frank family poignantly to life. "The kids can actually see the Frank family freeze in fear when they hear something on the street outside [of the annex, the family's hiding place]," Ferri said. "It's heart-wrenching." Students watching history relive itself on stage makes what might read like a fictionalized version of the truth seem all the more credible.

The play is still influential in 21st-century America, where, despite progress, bigotry still exists. "To see what prejudice can do when it is not overcome is important," Ferri said, especially in the light of America's recent election of its first black president. "Anne takes a stand and says, 'this is wrong.'"

"If you do nothing while a horror is perpetuated, you're somehow culpable in that you're making a choice to stand by and watch it happen," said Bay Street Artistic Director Murphy Davis of the play's message to young people.

Davis cast and directed the 90-minute play, Frances Goodrich's and Albert Hackett's 1956 Pulitzer-winning drama based on Holocaust victim Anne Frank's diary. Pierson High School junior and Sag Haborite Elizabeth Oldak plays Anne Frank. Her performance marks her induction into the Actors Equity Association, a union for professional actors.

"Literature Live!" follows a disappointing summer season at Bay Street, financially speaking. Private donors have responded to the recent fund-raising appeal with small yet meaningful contributions. The theater also hopes to receive a $250,000 private donation that is conditional upon matching funds.

Bay Street has not been deterred in its mission. The Theatre hopes to host "Literature Live!" at the YMCA Boulton Center for the Performing Arts in Bay Shore or at Queens Theatre in the Park in Corona, to widen outreach among up-island and New York City schools.

Remaining performances are Fri., Nov. 20, 11 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 21, 7 p.m. For more information, call Bay Street's box office at 631-725-9500 between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., Wednesday-Sunday.