LEWISTON — Mackenzie Richard, 15, is Anne Frank — on stage, that is — tonight and Saturday.

On Monday, Richard and other high school performers delivered what teachers called an effective, hands-on lesson to Lewiston Middle School students.

When Middle School teacher Irene Marshall learned the high school Drama Club was performing “The Diary of Anne Frank,” she asked if the high school students could perform a special show for seventh- and eighth-graders, since eighth-graders are studying the Nazi Holocaust.

As the play got underway, some in the middle school audience were a tough crowd.

“Kids were laughing at the beginning,” Richard said. As the play continued, the performers drew them in.

“In the final scene when the Nazis came in, it was dead silence,” Richard said. “You could hear a pin drop. It was a ‘yes’ moment for us that we hit home.”

For her part in the play, Richard styled her hair to resemble the historic Anne Frank, who during World War II in Amsterdam, hid with her family to avoid being arrested because she was Jewish.

During that time, Frank wrote in her diary. After she died at Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in Poland, her diary was published. Frank became one of the most famous Holocaust victims.

Playing Anne Frank allowed Richard to get to know her.

“She was a spitfire, very dramatic, very smart,” Richard said. “She had a very big heart.” She shared her favorite Anne Frank quote: “Look how a candle can both defy and define the darkness.”

That kind of deep thinking from a 13-year-old is inspiring, she said. “I think everything that happened made her smarter.”

Hailey Martlock, the Drama Club’s publicist, said what struck her was that Frank “tries to bring hope. She searches for it in the darkest of times.”

Playing Anne Frank put everyday things into perspective, Richard said, “how petty some things are, how we shouldn’t worry about what some people think of us when there’s so much more to look forward to or worry about.”

Lessons from the play can be connected to today, she said.

“The country is so divided now,” she said. The increase of racial harassment after the election “is a little parallel to what we’re putting onstage.”

Marshall said the play provided students with a hands-on approach to learning.

“It lit a fire,” the Middle School teacher said.

When her students returned to class, “they were fired up. They wanted to know more.”

One of the lessons she’s teaching is that the Holocaust didn’t happen overnight. Piece by piece, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler normalized the mistreatment of a minority race.

She asked her class if the Holocaust could happen again.

“They said, ‘Oh, yes. We need to learn from history.’”

At the end of the play, an actor playing Otto Frank, Anne’s father, walked out on the stage, alone, to tell everyone what had happened to the family. He was the only survivor.

Students were quiet, Marshall said. “It was powerful.”

Go and do

What: “The Diary of Anne Frank” performed by the Lewiston High School Drama Club

When: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 9 and 10; and 2 p.m. Dec. 10

Where: Lewiston Middle School auditorium.

Tickets: $8 for adults; $5 for students.