The Composer Making a Hip-Hop Musical About Anne Frank

A fewer years ago, Andrew Fox was struck by a transcendently atrocious idea. He would crook the communicative of Anne Frank into a satirical hip-hop musical: intersectional, inclusive, and inane. Fox was a theatre-loving composer who had grown dispirited by the manufacture successful general, and by humorless and preachy productions successful particular. His gloomy outlook was not improved by his wont of spending hours connected societal media, which is where, successful 2022, helium came crossed a statement implicit whether oregon not Anne Frank was the beneficiary of “white privilege”—notwithstanding her Jewish identity, for which she was hunted down by Nazi soldiers and shipped to the Bergen-Belsen attraction camp, wherever she died, successful 1945, astatine the property of fifteen. Like galore viral online debates, this 1 was alternatively one-sided: astir radical seemed to hold that the thought was ridiculous, including the celebrity-gossip tract TMZ, which covered the contention and rendered its ain dismissive verdict successful the signifier of a woozy-face emoji.

Even so, Fox couldn’t shingle the thought of a amusement that tried to update Frank’s communicative for modern governmental sensitivities. He wrote a rap, heavy indebted to Eminem’s “8 Mile,” successful the dependable of a feisty teen-ager whose hip-hop bravado has been dampened lone somewhat by the information that she and her household hap to beryllium crammed into an attic, hoping not to beryllium discovered and killed: “When this hiding’s over, I’ll beryllium successful demand, with my prose tighter / And if survival’s not the plan, I’ll beryllium a shade writer.” He decided that his Anne Frank would not beryllium achromatic but alternatively Latina, having grown up successful “the barrios of Frankfurt,” with a closeted begetter who loves to punctual radical that helium is neurodivergent; she has a crush connected Peter, a fellow-refugee whose sex individuality is the taxable of an inspirational acoustic-guitar ballad called “Non-Binary.” Fox kept penning songs and began to enlist collaborators, each of whom had to determine whether they wanted to hazard their careers by signing on. One histrion sent the publication to his manager and got a enactment backmost informing that the amusement “could extremity up feeling much similar a satire of progressive theatre than an existent reimagining of Anne Frank’s story.” The manager was not astatine each wrong, but the histrion committed to the amusement anyway.

In defiance of cautious theatre professionals—and, perhaps, of communal sense—“Slam Frank” lurched to life. Fox arranged a top-secret array read, booked nether a pseudonym, successful bid to bounds the blowback if radical hated it. He staged a one-off show and then, successful September, “Slam Frank” began a developmental tally astatine Asylum NYC, a drama theatre connected East Twenty-fourth Street, which has a 100 and 50 seats surrounding a tiny stage. For months, Fox had been gathering a pursuing connected societal media by posting a bid of deadpan updates connected Instagram and TikTok, from a dedicated “Slam Frank” account. When 1 idiosyncratic asked wherefore connected world Anne Frank would talk Spanish, Fox wrote, with mock exasperation, “Because she’s an immigrant?” When different noted that 1 of the songs sounded a spot similar Kanye West, who had precocious added to his infamy by promoting a website that sold swastika T-shirts, Fox replied, “Unfortunately we wrote this opus BEFORE we discovered that helium is monetizing and appropriating Jain & Hindu symbols.” Just astir each day, erstwhile radical wondered if it was each a put-on, Fox responded with a gag that turned retired not to beryllium a gag aft all, and which turned into a benignant of ngo statement: “ ‘Slam Frank’ is simply a existent musical.”

On a caller Wednesday night, a enactment of cheerful theatregoers stretched down Twenty-fourth Street, waiting to beryllium inspected by a defender with a handheld metallic detector. As acold arsenic Fox knows, the information protocol has not yet foiled immoderate planned incidents of violence, but a defender did erstwhile archer Fox, who besides plays a relation successful the musical, that his ain show could usage a spot much “heart.” (Fox decided that helium agreed, and tweaked his attack accordingly.) Onstage and off, Fox is simply a restless and voluble presence, the benignant of feline who seems to beryllium pacing backmost and distant adjacent erstwhile helium is sitting still. Aside from the guard’s show note, the absorption to “Slam Frank” has been mostly positive—surprisingly so, perhaps, fixed Fox’s evident tendency to annoy conscionable astir everyone. The New York Times described the amusement arsenic “clever” and “gleefully provocative”; the London Times called it “the astir superb caller philharmonic successful New York City,” and voiced a anticipation that it could “save Broadway.” The atrocious reviews helped, too: Fox News called it “grotesque,” and idiosyncratic started an online petition that labelled the accumulation “deeply offensive” and demanded that it beryllium cancelled; the petition provided a utile proposition of controversy, adjacent though less than a 1000 radical signed it. “Slam Frank” was primitively booked for 3 weeks, which turned into 4 months; it is present scheduled to tally done December 28th. In the lobby earlier the show, radical could bargain drinks and merchandise, including a “PROBLEM ATTIC” shot headdress and a “Slam Frank” yarmulke, which had required an expedition to a Judaica store successful Borough Park, Brooklyn. “I privation the ‘Slam Frank’ yarmulke to beryllium the azygous champion yarmulke anybody’s ever owned,” Fox told me, sounding a spot similar the bumptious creator manager of a determination theatre company—which is, successful fact, the relation that Fox was playing successful the show.

This quality was Fox’s large concession to respectability. Joel Sinensky, a screenwriter and playwright, and a puerility person of Fox’s, wrote the book, and they agreed that “Slam Frank” should beryllium a meta-musical. It opens with a memorably pretentious code from an creator manager who is besides a scapegoat; audiences tin blasted the character, not the creators, for thing that offends them. (Mel Brooks did thing akin successful “The Producers,” which had a crippled that gave viewers licence to laughter astatine “Springtime for Hitler,” the gloriously misguided mini-musical astatine the bosom of the show.) Even so, Fox knew that helium didn’t privation to trust connected casual punch lines astir harmless spaces and trigger warnings. “The past bully trigger-warning gag was made in, like, 2017,” helium told me. He wanted audiences to beryllium carried away, contempt themselves, by the show and dependable of the attic-bound characters singing, “Outside, they’re warring a warfare / But, successful here, we’re warring expectations!” That meant making definite that the songs didn’t play simply arsenic jokes. “If I’m penning this large queer anthem, I request the archetypal 3 minutes of it, astatine least—before it goes disconnected the rails—to beryllium thing that a clump of queer teen-agers would privation to execute successful their assemblage theatre program,” Fox says.