EdFringe Talk: Shiva for Anne Frank

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, *Written Interviews by

“I love the number 23 bus. Shout out, number 23 bus! I sit in the front row on the top level, and I love every second of it.”

WHO: Rachel McKay Steele

WHAT: “A celebration of Jewish Identity, girlhood, and community mourning. Can one Jewish comedian relate herself to Anne Frank? Although one of the most famous and recognisable young women in the world, Frank’s legacy is often simplified so she can remain a saintly beacon from one of humanity’s darkest chapters. Now that we find ourselves in yet another dark chapter, come laugh, celebrate, and mourn as filtered through her nose-job, Bat Mitzvah, and a one-night stand with a German. She’s trying to meet the moment but showing up fashionably late (with snacks) instead.”

WHERE: Playground 2 at ZOO Playground (Venue 186) 

WHEN: 14:20 (60 min)

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Is this your first time to Edinburgh?

It is! I think it’s absolutely incredible that there is a huge performing arts festival and people are coming from all over to perform in it and/or to watch and enjoy art. For a month, this beautiful city just celebrates art. I wish I was expressing this sentiment in a more articulate manner, but it’s just so cool and awesome!

As a performer, it has certainly been hard, and I’ve had days where I am exhausted and anxious and lonely except for the one hour I’m on stage. It’s been a dream come true to come here, and I think it’s a testament to the festival that the dream isn’t ruined by just how overwhelming it can be sometimes. It’s starting to feel less insane, so I’ve been able to enjoy myself more.

Also, as someone who spends a lot of time in a car in Los Angeles, I love the number 23 bus. Shout out, number 23 bus! I sit in the front row on the top level, and I love every second of it.

What are the big things you’ve learned since 2024 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?

I just got engaged, and it’s so new I’m still being really annoying about it. But in the year leading up to it, I learned even more about what it means to be present in a relationship and for someone you love. And not just when things are hard, but I’ve been trying to learn how to show up and make someone feel loved when things are going well too. It can be too easy to go into auto pilot sometimes.

I’ve also learned how much the heart can expand. I got to spend some really quality time with my best friend and her daughters recently. We don’t live even remotely close to each other, and I hadn’t seen her and her family in 6 years. And my heart just got bigger in the best way possible to contain her girlies too. The movie “In Her Shoes” is a criminally underrated Romcom that also features a character reading the e.e. Cummings poem, “I carry my heart in your heart,” and I’ve come to believe our hearts can carry so many hearts.

Continuing the love theme, one thing I haven’t learned is who won Love Island UK. It airs behind the UK schedule in the US, and I haven’t been able to catch up on it since I got here. NOBODY LET ME LEARN WHO WON LOVE ISLAND UK BEFORE I GET TO WATCH IT.

Tell us about your show.

I wrote it! Yay me!

Shiva for Anne Frank celebrates girlhood, horniness, and being an imperfect human (so being a human). It’s about growing up Jewish in the American south and trying to define chutzpah. I’m honoring and mourning Anne Frank, not the idea of her, but the fullness of who she was in her short life. She was really funny! People should know/remember how funny she was.

This show started as an ill conceived, one-off bit in a comedy show, yet I thought this could be something. I was re-reading the diary and connecting with it in such a new way as an adult. I had also just started working on it it when those Party City, Hitler youth, knock-offs marched in Charlottesville, Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us,” so it felt politically relevant in a new way too. And it certainly doesn’t seem to becoming less politically relevant, though I would love that, not just because I’d like less fascism and fewer bad things to happen, but then I could spend more time talking about Anne (and myself!)

I first workshopped it in 2018. I performed it a handful of times at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe, but then took several years away from it. I started reworking and revising at the end of 2023, and it’s such a different show now, I debating changing the title to reflect just how much it has changed. But I love the title.

I hope to keep performing the show after the festival. I don’t know where I will be taking it, but I will let as many people as possible know when I do!

What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?

Honey Honey, Moon Moon- Couplet. They are hilarious and delightful. They are incredibly talented musicians and songwriters. If you like joy, you will love it. I saw the show in LA at Hollywood Fringe, and then I saw it again here.

Medium Dead- Eleanor Shaw. She’s the show in Zoo Playground 2 after mine, so you can literally see it right after you’ve seen mine. I really loved it. It is deeply funny and deeply dark. Eleanor is a gifted performer and is so charming in a role that shouldn’t be able to charm you. Really inventive and very human.

The Butterfly Who Flew into a Rave- Oli Mathiesen with Lucy Lynch and Sharvon Mortimer. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like if Pina Bausch and Daft Punk had a love child and raised it on Red Bull and then it just went harder than you’ve ever seen modern dance go before.

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