Interview: Olivia Bernábe on Starring in Slam Frank: "I Want to Take Care of Anne"

When Slam Frank premiered at Asylum, TheaterMania called the audacious musical satire “the edgiest musical playing in New York right now,” praising its “satisfying laughter that can only come from engaging in the forbidden.”

Now the show has moved to the Orpheum in the East Village, with queer Latine theater artist Olivia Bernábe (they/them) continuing in the role of Anita. Bernábe, whose credits include Sesame Street the Musical at the Kennedy Center and the off-Broadway 10th anniversary production of The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, joined the project after discovering creator Andrew Fox through a viral TikTok video.

In this conversation, Bernábe discusses watching audiences react to the show’s deliberately provocative material, the evolution of Slam Frank from its developmental run, Fox’s wildly eclectic score, and why they believe the show ultimately honors Anne Frank rather than making her the butt of the joke.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You got involved with Slam Frank early on. How does it feel to see it evolve and take off like this?
I saw a viral video of [composer] Andrew Fox’s on TikTok that my roommate sent me, and then weeks later I was on Actors Access, and I saw that they had posted a casting call for Anita, and I couldn’t believe it because I didn’t think it was real. I thought it was a very committed bit online, but I loved the music. I thought, “This guy’s got something going on. He’s got something here.”

And now I really am living my dream every single day, and it’s so spectacular, and I’m so beyond grateful. I knew it was gonna be something special when I walked into the room for the concert for rehearsal and then I found out that I was in a room full of Broadway and West End vets, or internet-famous people. I was the only person who auditioned. Everyone else was asked, and they all had been in the business, so I just kind of felt like this kid that they plucked out of the ether, and I was like, “Oh my God, I get to be in a room with all of these incredible people. Can I hold my own?” And the answer is yes, which is unreal to me.

Will much be different at the Orpheum?
I’ll just say at least the technical aspect of the show is leaps and bounds ahead of what we were doing at Asylum. Asylum was a great place for our developmental run, but it was also very limited tech-wise. What we’re accomplishing right now at the Orpheum is something that I just didn’t even think it was possible. Every day that we’ve been in tech rehearsal, new elements are being added. It’s really exciting for me because it’s like the little show that could. It’s got a lot of moxie, and our director, Sam LaFrage, has such a vision, and he’s got such an eye for this. It’s been really wild to see the show transform. This version of it is still so playful and fun and irreverent, but it also, to me, feels more hopeful. There are aspects of this show, of this version of the show, that feel more grounded and maybe even more sincere, I would say. And I really love that.

You mentioned that you got excited early on when you heard the music. The music’s amazing. What can you say about Andrew Fox’s score?
It’s incredible. Andrew Fox is just brilliant. The detail and the thought and the inspiration that he takes is so precise and so spot on. Each song in this show kind of emulates a different genre of musical theater. You have different styles of music with the hip-hop and the rap, but then you also have music and songs that kind of lend itself to Dear Evan Hansen, or Hamilton, or Sunday in the Park With George. You have all of these different musical influences that Andrew has so beautifully woven into this show.

Do you think there’s a serious aspect to the show in addition to being fun, hopeful, exciting, and funny?
Absolutely. I think that this show goes so much deeper than most people anticipate and what most people expect, and I think that that’s kind of where the satire does its best work. People can get caught up with the irreverence online and the absurdity of it. But when you come to see the show, you see those points that are a bit more nuanced that allow us as actors and the audience to live in this kind of gray space, and I do think, if I may be so bold, that it honors Anne Frank. And that’s also not something that we take lightly.

I feel extremely privileged to be able to play this part. This is not a part that I would really get to play in any other world, so I do get emotional sometimes because I think about how Andrew and Joel Sinensky, our book writer, have trusted me with this sacred story. This is not making fun of Anne Frank. It’s not mocking her or her family, and she is never the butt of the joke. I’m very privileged to be able to play this role, and I want to take care of Anne.

In Los Angeles, Stan Zimmerman directed a production of The Diary of Anne Frank with all Latine actors. It was wild to know that while they were mounting an intersectional reimagining in earnest, we were satirizing a super woke theater troupe “diversifying” the story of Anne Frank. That’s kind of what we are teasing in our show: this reimagining of certain narratives and the ways woke culture, even with good intentions, sometimes goes so far to the left that at best it misses the mark, and at worst finds itself accidentally aligned with the right.

It sounds like the ambition of this show is really to be thought-provoking but not insulting. Is that fair?
I don’t think that the creators are afraid of offending people, but it should be thought-provoking. Last year, a lot of people would come up to me after the show and they would tell me that they came in with one set of views and left with the feeling that they need to interrogate some things that they have believed for a long time. That kind of that conversation happened with people from all different walks of life.

What this show does really well is connecting it to now. There are connections between what was happening in Germany in the 1940s during the Holocaust, when people were getting pulled out of their homes and being sent to camps, and what’s happening right now in the United States, where are being sent to these gated facilities with horribly inhumane conditions. These are immigrants, but they’re people who are contributing to our society. Just because you’re an immigrant or you’re not from here does not mean that you should be treated like a criminal.

Slam Frank, as crazy as it is, I think is extremely poignant and very appropriate show for right now.

What is it like hearing audiences react so vocally to this show?
It is so incredible at Asylum because we were also right up there with the audience. There was no room, and so we really kind of were on the same playing field, and they were really just as much a part of the show as the actors were. To be able to watch their reactions was really informative. For the most part, it was set every night, but there are moments in the show where we’ve really got to play interact, and it was a really cool aspect of the show for us. Adding the audience is the last ingredient.

Do you want people who haven’t seen the show to come in knowing nothing and with no preconceived notions, or do you like people to come in prepared?
I hope that people who come in to see the show are open-minded because I think the show will surprise and shock people in delightful and unexpected ways.