‘Anne Frank – The Musical’ premieres in Braga and returns to Porto during Freedom Month

After its grand debut at the Coliseu do Porto, a month and a half ago, ‘Anne Frank – The Musical’ is returning to the stage, at a time when the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April will cover the country from end to end.

The Grand Auditorium of Altice Forum Braga is the first stop for the Plateia d’Emoções theater play, which after the show on the 12th (9.30 pm) leaves the “City of Archbishops” to head back to “Invicta”, for three sessions in the Grand Auditorium of the Vilar Oporto Hotel, one of the largest and most modern cultural spaces in the city, with capacity for almost 1,300 people. On the 23rd and 24th, the sessions (10 am and 2.30 pm) are intended for the school public and on the 25th holiday the session (5 pm) is intended for the general public.

Based on the diary of a young woman of Jewish origin who was a victim of the Holocaust, the play is the first major play in Portugal in a musical theater format, based on what is perhaps the most famous diary in the world. A work that inspired the Vila Nova de Gaia company in an original production, with 16 actors on stage and the work of a total of 30 professionals from different technical areas.

With original text and lyrics by Hélder Reis, a well-known television professional, “Anne Frank – The Musical” presents the German author “as she has never been shown”, in the words of Fernando Tavares, founder and artistic director of the company, and does not fail to a parallelism in the end to the current contexts of intolerance and conflict in the world.

The play – a hymn to friendship, love, peace, family and hope – unfolds through 20 scenes set to music and 10 original songs, of remarkable impressiveness and expressiveness, written by André Ramos. In addition to collaborations developed for musicals such as “Fame”, “Scents of Light”, “Rent”, “Grease”, “Lion King” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” (by Filipe la Féria), the musician worked at the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Arts Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and developed work for conductors John-Elliot Gardiner, Paul Daniel and Leif Segerstam, among others.

The work’s dynamic scenography reconstructs the secret annex (now a house-museum) where Anne Frank took refuge for more than two years, in Amsterdam, along with seven other people, represented by many other young figures from the national theater.

The play is a unique and engaging musical, full of emotions and values.

Created in 2011, Plateia d’Emoções specialized in musical theater in 2015. The company develops an average of 150 shows per year (for a handful of theatrical productions). Because it essentially invests in the “development of the public of the future”, its “great beacon”, as the founder recognizes, its audiences are made up of around 85% of school-age audiences. And, invariably, the tours of the pieces she (re)creates usually take her to almost twenty cities.

“We want to cultivate the habit of going to the theater and that is also why we do not take our plays to schools, but rather to facilities with all the technical conditions for performing art to develop with the quality that audiences deserve”, emphasizes Fernando Tavares.