'Offensive' musical starring a pansexual Anne Frank could save Broadway

[TheProle]

Slam Frank, whose developmental run opened on September 17 and closes on October 26, is a reimagining of the story of Anne Frank that asks: What if her diary were inclusive? What if we addressed the lack of queer representation in that attic? What if we finally told the story of the Holocaust in a way that honours all people, not just the white people it has always centred on?

In other words: what if someone produced a musical about Anne Frank fit for the 2020s?

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The reason? It could be that, ever since the first election of Donald Trump, a reactionary “woke” piousness has taken root across America’s cultural institutions — especially in the theatre. Nearly every significant American theatre company continues to apologise for the arrival of Europeans on US soil and to offer pro forma declarations of its own enlightenment. And many shows of late (Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Thanksgiving Play, Liberation) have felt more sanctimonious than subversive.

But Slam Frank proves that true originality still exists in musical theatre. Sparked by a 2022 Twitter commenter who asserted that “Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege”, it reimagines Anne as “Anita” — a pansexual Latina hiding from the Nazis in a radically inclusive attic with her militant black mother, her neurodiverse father and assorted other disordered personalities.

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/slam-frank-holocaust-musical-broadway-jtfpvtndk