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Kathe Mazur discusses narrating Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex

After her experience in the studio narrating Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex, Kathe Mazur wrote us to talk about the recording process.

"Okay, let's hear a bit," my Producer says as she switches on my microphone and begins to roll. I am sitting behind the glass window and the loose manuscript pages of the latest audio book I'm recording are on the music stand in front of me. We get ready to do a quick sound check. I am in a cushioned chair with plenty of lumbar support. I have kicked off my Uggs and I'm sitting cross-legged on the chair which is often the most comfortable position for me. I record from loose pages, so that instead of hearing the sound of the turning pages, I can just slide the page over when I  hit the last sentence and still be able to read from the bottom before moving our eyes to the top of the next page. Everything in the booth is calculated to lessen the possibility of extraneous noise. I wear no jewelry that can jingle, no clothes that are starchy or crinkly. Next to me, on a table, are my cup of Throat Coat tea, my homeopathic throat drops, Vaseline for when my lips get dry, a pencil, and my natural Elderberry syrup for cutting down on mucus.

There are several producer/directors with whom I work regularly and today I'm working with Jill who is in her 50's, lives in Topanga Canyon, and is wearing Uggs, like me. She is tiny, grew up in the South, and believes in all things spiritual. She was married and divorced years ago from a Chinese man who is still her best friend, and she has never re-married. She tends to give notes more often than most other directors. That probably translates to one every 20 minutes, if I were to time it. Often it's the same note and it's always right, though I rarely hear another director give it, " Be more..present."

For the sound check, I pick up a few sentences in the middle of the page. "Okay, sounds good. Start anytime," Jill says, and cuts off her microphone so that as I begin, I hear only the Mic'ed sound of my own voice. I get the kinks out vocally in those first few minutes – take some drops, a few sips of tea—settle in. I will be reading for about an hour before I take a break. Then I'll get some more tea, gab for a few minutes with the other readers working in the studio that day as they take their breaks, get their tea refilled, look at the front page of today's paper on the lunchroom table We tell each other what we're recording.

I'm doing a short book today, only 200 pages, and the type is large so it should only take me 2 days working about 5 hours a day, and then maybe a third morning, to finish. I am recording THE TALES FROM THE SECRET ANNEX by Anne Frank. It turns out Anne Frank didn't just write her famous diary. She wrote pages and pages of stories, essays, fiction, memory pieces. When I glance over it to prepare, it just looks like the writings of a young girl; unsophisticated and childlike. I scan it to see what character voices I'll need to do and I worry about finding the tone—it seems so…  "young" is the best word for it. Not particularly rich but I want to do justice to it. I am looking for a way in.

My mother tells me about a new book by Francine Prose about Anne Frank, that discusses her as a person who, had she lived, would almost certainly have been a professional writer. In examining her writings, Prose apparently argues that she was not just filling time expressing herself. She was crafting her writing, she was at the beginning of being a serious writer. This helps me as I go into the project.

There's a truth about narrating audio books; when writing is good, the time flies, the words are easy to say and they pour out. As a narrator, your own artistry really takes off.  It's like surfing—you can ride the writing like a wave and you become the writer's voice. You move at exactly the same pace as the words, and it's a rush. Bad writing, clunky writing, is a chore to perform. I call it " working for every word." The words fight your mouth; your tongue, your lips, your face can feel actually tired from producing the sentences as you slog through the paragraphs.

We do everything we can to bring it to life and to serve the writer, but with bad writing I am aware of how long it's taking and I glance down to see what page I'm on.  I can't wait to clock 20 more pages, 50 more, the day's 70 or 80. Sometimes I'm on a kind of automatic pilot. I can't wait for the break, and I dread when that 10 or 15 minutes is up and I have to go back into the booth, shut the two soundproofed doors, and climb back into the chair to wade though at least 20 more pages.

But not today. Anne Frank is a real writer. Reading her words something happens to me. Not only does it fly by but when, at page 70, I say to Jill, "That was a boring section", referring to the last few pages,  it hits me that to say at page 70 that a couple of pages are "boring" is to say that the first 70 weren't at all. This girl knocks my socks off.  I am reading the writing of a 13, 14, 15 year old girl who not only was destined to be a writer but knew it and was planning on it. She was absolutely writing for an audience.

I haven't read the diary since I was a young girl, about the same age as Anne. Now I listen to it on my IPOD as I drive to and from work. "When the war is over," she writes, "I am going to write a story about our time in the Annex, and maybe I will use this diary as a source." Listening to it, it is clear why it has become such an important work. This little girl was clear about what was happening around her and crystal clear about herself. " I have one true gift," she writes, "my capacity for self-examination." Most of us read this book when we ourselves are about 13, and then probably never again. And so we come to this of the book as an ordinary diary of an ordinary girl in horrible circumstances. But this is no ordinary diary. This must be one of the greatest memoirs of all time. Thousands of girls must have kept diaries of that time. Many of them might have been found. None of them were this book, or this miracle girl.

It is easy as pie to record her writing: the words are airborne across the years. She has a message in these writings, as in her diary. She writes about truth, what it is to feel, to be alive, to want to live, and be understood, to fall in love. The words fly out of me and I don't want to stop. I realize that today, I am her messenger. Almost 65 years later, in this booth, in my comfy chair, with my Throat Coat tea and with my darling, nutty Jill on the other side of the glass, I get to carry her message. I am the conduit, and I am honored to carry her voice on my own.

If Anne had lived to be a woman I have no doubt she would have been a writer and perhaps have become an important voice. She would have told more stories. But it is hard to imagine that any would have had the impact of her diary. Perhaps we needed the tragic story and even her death to bring us to the book. But her diary is a real book, and even in these little pieces of her fiction, her simple essays about school life, or the fragments of  the novel she never got to finish, in every line is the passion or what she is expressing. Like the diary- simple, direct, honest, sending a message that is uniquely hers.

Her father Otto was the only surviving member of their family.  It was he that came back, and finding the diary, championed it. In one of the short stories I narrate, she seems to be speaking directly to him, sending a message into his future without her, helping him as she writes, " Even if you are the only one left of a large family, you can still make your life beautiful".  He was and he did. He remarried, he had a family, and he devoted himself to her dream, the one she expressed so clearly: to be a writer who could affect millions with her words.

I read the last sentence of the book and slide the last page over onto the finished pile. After a pause, giving the ending its moment, the soft purring sound of my own mic switches off. In the quiet, Jill and I look at each other through the glass. Her mic switches on. "That's it," she says. I switch the light off on the music stand.

Listening Library at the Movies!

You know what they say…the book was always better than the movie.  Listen to these great titles before you head to the theatre!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One: THE LIGHTNING THIEF
by Rick Riordan, read by Jesse Bernstein
Movie in theatres 2/12/2010
Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGITXIELXXE

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really be expected to stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he's not even sure he believes himself.

Until the Minotaur chases him to summer camp.

Suddenly, mythical creatures seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. The gods of Mount Olympus, he's coming to realize, are very much alive in the twenty-first century. And worse, he's angered a few of them: Zeus's master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy has just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property, and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. On a daring road trip from their summer camp in New York to thegates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, Percy and his friends–one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena–will face a host of enemies determined to stop them. To succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of failure and betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll, read by Jim Dale
Movie in theatres 3/5/2010
Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WYAvip2Dl4

Seven-year-old Alice falls asleep in a meadow and dreams that she plunges down a rabbit hole. She finds herself first too large and then too small. She meets such strange characters as Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the King and Queen of Hearts, and experiences wondrous, often bizarre adventures, trying to reason in numerous discussions that do not follow the usual paths of logic. Upon totally rejects the dream world, she wakes up.

Eclipse
by Stephenie Meyer, read by Ilyana Kadushin
Movie in theatres 6/30/2010

Edward's soft voice came from behind me.

I turned to see him spring lightly up the porch steps, his hair windblown from running. He pulled me into his arms at once, just like he had in the parking lot, and kissed me again. This kiss frightened me. There was too much tension, too strong an edge to the way his lips crushed mine–like he was afraid we had only so much time left to us.

As Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob–knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the ageless struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella has one more decision to make: life or death. But which is which?

Beezus and Ramona
by Beverly Cleary, read by Stockard Channing
Movie in theatres 7/23/2010

Beezus Quimby tries very hard to be patient with her littler sister, but four-year-old Ramona has the habit of doing the most unpredictable, annoying, embarrassing things in the world. Sometimes Beezus doesn't like Ramona very much, and that makes her feel very guilty. Sisters are supposed to love each other but pesky little Ramona just doesn't seem very lovable to Beezus.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale
Part one of the movie in theatres 11/19/2010
Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v831FcK4dYQ

It all comes down to this - a final faceoff between good and evil. You plan to pull out all the stops, but every time you solve one mystery, three more evolve. Do you stay the course you started, despite your lack of progress? Do you detour and follow a new lead that may not help? Do you listen to your instincts, or your friends?

Lord Voldemort is preparing for battle and so must Harry. With Ron and Hermione at his side, he's trying to hunt down Voldemort's Horcruxes, escape danger at every turn, and find a way to defeat evil once and for all. How does it all end?