Playing the title character in "The Diary of Anne Frank" brings a lot of responsibility with it, said Sydney Davis, a 14-year-old freshman at Statesboro High School who will portray Frank in the play's Friday premiere at the Averitt Center.
      "She's a figure in history who is not fictional," Davis said. "She is real and her story is so powerful and truthful, I want to give her complete respect and learn her role as much as possible. It's a great challenge."
      Davis and a cast of nine others will perform "The Diary of Anne Frank" Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on the Emma Kelly Theater stage. All tickets are general admission and are $10. Call 212-2787 to reserve seats.
      Frank was 13 years old in July 1942 when her family went into hiding to escape persecution of Jews by the Nazis in World War II. Her family and a few friends stayed in some hidden rooms of her father's office building for two years before they were betrayed to the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Only Anne's father Otto Frank survived the war and he had her diary published in 1947.
      The play is produced by Tony Phillips and directed by Donna Hooley an instructor at Ogeechee Technical College. Davis is joined in the cast by Brooks Adams, who plays her father, Cal Bookhoop as Peter Van Daan, Angie Hamilton as Edith Frank, Baylee Davenport as Margot Frank, John Gleissner as Mr. Van Daan, Vicki Dwinell as Mrs. Van Daan Stan Haselton as Mr. Dussell, Claire Bookhoop as Miep and Danny Hooley as Mr. Kraler.
      The production will be presented as an oral interpretation of the play, where the actors read the roles, with minimal movement, stage sets and costumes.
      While the story has humorous and poignant moments, it also contains some terrifying scenes. The production uses a video depiction of the horrors of the arrest of the Frank family and the brutal nature of the concentration camps, so there is a PG-13 rating for the show.
      In her message in Melissa Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies, one of the Dutch who helped to hide the Franks and their friends, attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust," by writing:

"Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."