DAVID ADAMS speaks to Matt Logan, director of a stage adaption of ‘The Hiding Place’ which has been made into a feature film…
Geelong, Australia
The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom’s account of her family’s efforts to help Jewish people hide in their home in The Netherlands during World War II is one of the most-well known Christian works of the 20th century.
And despite the fact that it was first published in 1971 – more than 50 years ago, it’s Matt Logan’s belief that the story it tells has as much to say to those who encounter it today as it did then.
A scene from The Hiding Place with Nan Gurley (left) starring as Corrie ten Boom. PICTURE: Courtesy of The Hiding Place
“Corrie and their family risked their lives for people they didn’t even know – it was not just their best friend down the street that they hid,” says Logan, who directed a stage adaption of The Hiding Place which has been made into a film (which he helped produce).
“They hid close to 800 Jews in their time…some of them were there for less than an hour…[so] there was no way that they had personal relationship with these people in order that they were risking their lives. How many of us could risk our lives for people we barely shook hands with?
Matt Logan. PICTURE: Supplied.
“Their protest was love and their home was not their own, it was open to anyone that knocked. And that is amazing.”
“I think that in our world today…it’s so easy to say ‘Not my problem, not my people, I’m going to keep myself safe’. I’m convicted every single time of their selflessness and the genuine free love they gave to these people…Their protest was love and their home was not their own, it was open to anyone that knocked. And that is amazing.”
The Hiding Place, which stars Nashville stage actress Nan Gurley as Corrie ten Boom, Carrie Tillis as her sister Betsie and Broadway, film and TV veteran Conrad John Shuck as their father Caspar, is being released in select US theatres this week (3rd and 5th August) and for a one day run in theatres internationally on 16th August.
Speaking to Sight from his hometown of Franklin, just south of Nashville in Tennessee, Logan says he became involved with the film after he was approached by the play’s writer, his friend AS Peterson, with whom he’s collaborated on many previous projects.
Peterson, who’d written an adaptation of The Hiding Place for the stage, invited him to come and take a look and they’d just started the conversation about possibilities when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It’s then that they started considering the idea of filming the play.
The ten Booms – Nan Gurley plays Corrie ten Boom (left), Carrie Tillis her sister Betsie and Conrad John Shuck their father Caspar. PICTURE: Courtesy of The Hiding Place.
Logan has a background of working in theatre including as a designer and costumer and his company, Matt Logan Productions, has produced the film along with partners The Rabbit Room and MA2LA.
He says they really wanted to capture the theatrical production “in a very different way from what you normally see”.
Rather than taking what he calls an “archival” approach to the filming, “we all wanted it to be a different experience so [the audience] would feel closer to the theatrical production”.
Logan says his approach to theatre has always been similar to that of making a film.
“[I’ve involved] from the beginning of a project’s script all the way to the very end and that’s not typical of theatre – a lot of people walk in with a script already formed and then they just manifest it,” he says. “[But] for me, I approach it in the way a film-maker does, in the sense that we start from the ground up…and I also approach theatre with a cinematic sensibility…The goal is for it to read the way a film does.”
Conversely, Logan says he also aims to bring a theatrical sense to cinema.
“I really believe that there’s a place where cinema and theatre meet and the lines are very blurry.”
Asked about the challenges involved in producing an adaption of such a well-known – and beloved – work, Logan says he has new-found respect for those who have made film adaptions of books, like The Lord of the Rings (not that he’s comparing the two).
He says, for example, that they spent two days looking at one of the final scenes in the film.
“And it really wasn’t about what we presented, it was more the intention,” he says, adding that there were some “controversial moments, even theologically between cast members to figure out what we felt”.
“I don’t think any of those doubts presented to the audience – it was just us wrestling with the material and how do we want to view this moment? How do we want to view that moment?”
One of the challenges was how to present moments in the book which Logan says “are in many way miraculous”.
“We don’t want to cheapen them but we also don’t want to do some ‘felt-board church version’ that makes you feel like, ‘Everything was easy’…To me that’s very important – that we know the struggle because I don’t think at any point the Bible tells us that when you become a Christian your life’s going to be easy. It’s misleading and I think to say that Corrie’s choices, which were so admirable, were easy is to cheapen them. So we had a lot of discussion on every angle.”
Logan says that it was the hope of all those involved to “honour” ten Boom’s story.
“We never wanted to make light of it; we never wanted to tell it falsely.”
One difference between the film and the book is that in the play, Corrie is portrayed as the elder sister to Betsie when in fact the opposite was the case.
“We didn’t care to make a big point of it but when we came to casting, in both the children and the adults, the right people were just different in an age switch….[S]ome people might get hung up on that, just because they want to, but guess what, they’re going to get hung up on other little details because it’s a theatre play.
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While the play – which was largely filmed without an audience present – did have a four week theatre season at the Soli Deo Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in July last year, Logan says there are no plans to take the stage play on tour.
“I think the filming is our tour – we now can reach everybody. We’re thrilled to see high schools, collages, regional theatres wanting to do the script in their own production which is wonderful, but we sort of feel like our tour is the film.”
Logan believes that The Hiding Place brings a message that should resonate with contemporary audiences.
“Today…it’s easy to fall into our compartments and into our little world and only the people we know down the street matter to us. And I love the way that Corrie teaches us – and her father too and Betsie – through their words and their actions to love bigger, to look beyond and to not be caught up in just ourselves. That, I feel like, is a relevant story for the ages – every generation we should be retelling it.”
For tickets and screening information, head to The Hiding Place.
