Cover Feature
Camille Beeson ’26 recently completed three performances of a one-woman show playing Anne Frank, the young World War II diarist, in a fitting culmination to her stellar college theatre career. Recognized as among the most talented actors to attend Concordia, Beeson brought to each role she played in Concordia’s theatre program a vivacity, empathy, and deep love for the Lord which she now hopes to employ on stages and sets in the larger world of entertainment.
“Camille has a huge work ethic and is super-humble and down to earth,” says theatre professor and director Lori Siekmann. “She doesn’t have that ‘actor ego’ but is a person of strong faith. Her desire to be a good steward of the gifts she’s been given and perform for God’s glory is a big factor in her life. She is a light to people around her.”
Having directed Beeson since she was a freshman, Siekmann calls her one of those rare actors who has “it,” a quality that shone especially while playing the 14-year-old Anne. Beeson brought unusual depth to the part, spending more than a semester researching Anne’s life, the Holocaust, and competing theories about how to portray real historical characters.
While presenting Anne’s diaries and message accurately, Beeson saw an opportunity to sensitively portray the hope of the Gospel.
“Anne’s story is an opportunity to see an artistic representation of one of the darkest periods of human history,” Beeson says. “Through that portrayal, I prayed audiences would understand more deeply our brokenness and need for a Savior, and that our Savior has met us in this place. There’s nothing else we need to do but run to him and trust him.”
Beeson grew up in Tucson, the daughter of a non-denominational pastor and a mother who operates a biblical counseling practice with an emphasis on reconciling people’s identities with the truth of the Gospel. The family, including Camille’s two younger siblings, also fostered four children in their home over a six-year period.
Camille was involved in high school theatre, and when it came time to apply to colleges she “had an iron, rock-hard grip on my future and was dead-set on attending a private Christian college in Southern California for theatre,” she says.
“I’m a very organized person who thinks a long way ahead, so I got a big book with an 8-foot-by-8-foot spreadsheet that unfolded and included Christian colleges across America. It covered my entire floor,” she says. “I marked every college with a theatre major, researched all of them and whittled it down to a solid list focused on a number of Southern California Christian liberal arts colleges.”
Reliant on scholarships, she prayed, “Okay, God, I need you to provide finances. I have no idea how it’ll happen, but I trust you.” She applied to 12 colleges, completing innumerable supplemental applications for honors and theatre programs. Then one day a friend sitting next to her at school had Concordia’s website open on a computer screen, a Christian university Camille had yet to discover in her searching. Beeson laughed “because I thought I knew them all,” Camille says.
In the brief window left in which to apply, she pushed through tears and exhaustion to complete Concordia’s application minutes before the midnight deadline. Soon, acceptance letters rolled in from other institutions, but scholarship offers initially disappointed. “God totally shut the door on my whole dream,” Beeson says. “I wrestled with God and said, ‘Lord, I don’t know where you want me to go to college but I trust you will provide everything I need for the next season of my life.’ I felt total peace about that for the first time.”
On Christmas morning, the Beeson family went to the garage to drive to Camille’s grandparents’ house. Her father held up a letter from Concordia which looked like so much other college mail they had received.
“I found this letter on the trash can,” he said. “Do you want me to throw it away?”
“That might be an update about Concordia,” Camille answered. “I might as well open it.”
She took out the letter while in transit and “screamed in the back seat,” she recalls. “Dad almost drove off the road. I said, ‘I got the full ride scholarship to Concordia!’”
Four years spent “with a death grip on my college process” ended with assurances of where she would go, what she would do, and how she would pay for it.
“I have nothing to boast in,” Beeson says. “It was God saying, ‘Experience my blessing.’”
Five days later, the family drove to Concordia for a visit. Stepping out of the car on campus, “Truly, I felt the peace of the Lord emanating from the ground and filling my whole body from my toes to the top of my head,” Camille says. “I was overwhelmed because all my college dreams — everything on my list — was encapsulated in this school. I was blown away by God’s mercies to me.”
She later earned full scholarships from other schools but stuck with Concordia, even finding a local church to attend on that first visit. Since then she has led music during worship there, playing piano and singing on Sundays, and training young people to be part of the worship team as well.
Beeson arrived on campus two weeks before most other freshmen, having been cast in a play. The extra time “was huge because I got to make intimate connections with people in the theatre department,” she says. “That was such a gift to me.”
Siekmann recalls that “she came in and was amazing in a lead role as a freshman.” Other roles followed, in Little Women, Trojan Women, and playing the part of Emma in Jane Austen’s eponymous story (in which Beeson found the character’s overweening pride pricking her own conscience and eliciting personal repentance).
“Professors Tony Vezner and Lori Siekmann have been a huge influence, and I’ve been so humbled, challenged, cared for, and seen by them,” Beeson says. “They have been so intentional to love me and see me as a person and a sister in Christ. I would not be the person I am without them, hands down.”
In her other major, English, she cites Dr. John Norton as “a huge blessing, caring for my development as a Christian and a person.” Beeson also sings in the Concordia Choir and says Dr. Michael Busch and Dr. Clarissa Shan have challenged her and greatly helped her to steward her gifts.
Dr. Jeff Held, assistant dean of the School of Arts & Sciences and director of orchestral activities, knew of Beeson’s talents and approached her a year ago about acting in a special performance of From the Diary of Anne Frank.
“I had seen her do outstanding work in different roles and found her to be exceptional at delivering monologues so naturally and with such humanness,” Held says. “In her roles here at Concordia she has been super-impressive in how she uses space and time. She’s one of the best I’ve seen at this at the university.”
Beeson agreed and found the Diary to present a number of puzzles. The script was not meant to be acted but to be read, originally by Audrey Hepburn, with musical accompaniment. Famous American composer Michael Tilson Thomas created the script based on excerpts from Anne’s diary and set it to original orchestral music.
Siekmann, Held, and Beeson decided to add acting to the performance, intertwining Thomas’ orchestration and other elements to depict and even embody Anne’s thoughts and the world around her. For Beeson, this required intense focus on the precise timing of the music and her movements, spoken words, and orchestration.
“As an actor I’ve done plenty of musicals and plays, but this was a unique thing,” Beeson says. “I was challenged in many different modes in my brain that I’m not normally challenged in, to listen and respond.”
In the months leading up to the performances, she tackled literary theory in English classes and focused on how Anne’s work could and should be portrayed. She read widely about Anne and her historical context and visited the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. twice for research.
While seeking to accurately portray Anne Frank, Beeson sought an additional dimension. She wanted to leave audiences with Christ-centered hope. Having played Betsy Ten Boom in a stage version of The Hiding Place in high school, she recalled Betsy’s dying words in that play: “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.” With that interpretive key, Beeson anchored her portrayal of Anne in a Christian paradigm.
“As an artist, I could make a truthful representation of Anne from her own writings so the audience could experience that reality. Alongside that experience, I wanted the audience to see that ‘there is no pit that God is not deeper still,’” she says.
Held chose to use the smaller venue of the Zhang Recital Hall in the Borland-Manske Center to reinforce with tight spaces and darkness the feeling of being in Anne’s cramped annex. At one point when Anne’s city was being bombed, Beeson crawled into the audience as if hiding.
Held, leading what he calls a “compact symphony orchestra” behind partitions, gave the music unsteady meter punctuated by haunting violin, harpsichord, and cello solos at key moments. At one point cello professor Yue Tang, in the role of Anne’s father, walked on stage, picked up her diary from the floor after she had been arrested, then sat down and played John Williams’ Elegy for Cello and Orchestra as an emotional outpouring to close the show.
Spectators not only saw this riveting performance, but also were presented with an accompanying display of artwork and poetry inspired by Anne Frank’s life.
Approaching graduation day and beyond, Beeson continues to work at the writing studio on campus (“I love helping people,” she says), and to help defray college expenses she is a princess party performer spending “a lot of my weekends dressing up as Disney princesses and going to kids’ parties across Orange County,” she says. “The hours are great, I love working with kids, and you get paid really well.”
As a member of the Concordia Choir she heads to New York City this spring as part of the USA250 concert series, and in the theatre department she is continually eager to talk with other students and staff about the gospel, making a habit of praying for and with her fellow students. After graduating she plans to audition regionally for theatres, film, and television.
“I really love using theatre as a means to bring communities together to bless and challenge them,” she says.
A longer-term life goal is to return to Tucson someday to “pour into the community there and teach theatre at the private Christian high school I graduated from,” she says. “I love that community. They were a huge influence on me.”
Whatever she does will involve “storytelling and loving people,” she promises. “That’s what I’m made to do. As long as I’m doing that, I think God will be glorified.”