AACC’s Fall Theater Production, Concerts And Dance Performance Take To The Stage

Anne Arundel Community College’s fall production is “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which will run for two weekends in November.

Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2025 10:17 am

By Meredith Winter

Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) Chair of Theater and Dance Sean Urbantke emphasized that the school’s fall production is “going to be really powerful.” Alum Liz Fall, social media manager for the theater department, echoed that sentiment by stating that audiences should bring both a sense of joy and a supply of tissues.

Tissues will be necessary as the true story of Anne Frank, a Jewish Dutch teenager who was forced to hide with her family for two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, unfolds onstage at AACC.

Urbantke shared that AACC’s upcoming production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” will follow Wendy Kesselman’s 1997 adaptation of the original dramatization by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett that premiered on Broadway in 1955. Their stage production is based on the posthumously published book “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, which came out in 1947, two years after her death.

The book comprises diary writings by Frank beginning when she was just 13 years old. It chronicles her experience of hiding with her mother, father, sister and another family in a secret annex space above her father’s office in Amsterdam. The true horrors of the Holocaust are exposed as Frank’s Jewish family hides to avoid being deported to their death by the Nazis but are ultimately apprehended in 1944. At the age of 15, Frank died of typhus in a concentration camp. Only her father, Otto Frank, survived the war.

More than 20 cast members, crew and designers have rehearsed for the AACC production for weeks. The company includes students – many from the school’s play production course – as well as alumni and community members.

“Even at first read, oh my gosh, by the time the end of the play comes, we’ve invested so much, we’ve enjoyed the characters so much, and then – this is kind of like the Titanic, you know the boat is sinking – but you’ve just now lived a couple hours of the two years almost that these characters were in this isolated environment, hopeful and talking about how they were going to go about their day-to-day afterward,” Urbantke shared. “And the end monologue is Otto Frank, the father, and he barely made it through just reading the monologue – his voice was cracking and things like that – and in the room that night, including myself, there were four other fathers. (We were) all just teary-eyed. You could have heard a pin drop when they finished the last words.”

Though the set is minimal, Fall noted the lighting and sound are beautiful and help immerse the audience in the environment.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” will run for two weekends in November. AACC also has several upcoming concerts, a dance performance, and a holiday music celebration on its performance calendar through the end of the year. Those details are listed below. Additional information is available at www.aacc.edu/calendar.

AACC Theatre Presents “The Diary of Anne Frank”

Fridays and Saturdays, November 7, 8, 14 and 15 at 7:30pm
Sundays, November 9 and 16, at 2:00pm
Robert E. Kauffman Theater in the Pascal Center for Performing Arts