Most people are familiar with Anne Frank’s story. She came to represent the 1940s Holocaust for many through the internationally best-selling diary or the subsequent films, plays and TV specials about her life.

Now the Center for Puppetry Arts re-imagines the German Jewish teenager’s story. Directed by Bobby Box, a gay associate at the Center, the world premiere “Anne Frank: Within and Without” looks at Frank’s life of in an unorthodox manner, via puppets.

The production covers the girl’s life from birth through the two years her family spent hiding from Nazis to her time in concentration camps.

In the show, there are two versions of Frank. Hope Mirlis represents/puppets the younger Frank, the one who wrote in the famous diary. Janet Metzger, who Atlanta audiences may know better as a Jazz singer, puppets the older version of Frank, had she survived the Holocaust and become an adult. This is also the more private Anne Frank, who was more shy, Box says.

The director first got the idea to do the show a decade or so ago while in Amsterdam. Box decided to move forward on it after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he says.

“When the Patriot Act hit, it felt like Nazi Germany,” Box says. “This show is part of a response to that.”

After receiving two grants for the show, the director was able to return to Amsterdam.

“There I re-traced Anne Frank’s steps,” he remembers. “It was like detective work. I went to the place she lived. My hope was to bring a sense of authenticity and intimacy to the show.”

After accepting the role as a grown-up Frank, Metzger found out more about the real person, she says.

“I’m a little embarrassed, because before this I’d never read her diaries,” Metzger admits. “She was an incredible writer. I knew that she had hid for two years, but what amazes me is that she was able to think of herself as a character. There was such a depth of thought about her.”

Frank’s story resonates with both Box and Metzger as gay people, they say.

“This show is all about diversity and embracing others,” Box says. “It deals with tolerance and what happens when all this breaks down. I look at Anne Frank almost as an odd metaphor for being in the closet. She was trapped in there, no one knew she were there. Some people choose to be in the closet and never come out of it.”

Metzger says she sees a parallel between Nazi Germany and today’s fundamentalists.

“Someone sent me a link recently, comparing a Nazi propaganda flyer to what the religious right is saying. It’s scary,” she says. “The religious fundamentalists sound almost like the Nazis did.”

Box and Metzger point to the very real gay connection to what happened in Europe in the 1940s.

“Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, but it wasn’t six millions lives that were lost,” Metzger says. “Homosexuals were also killed, the insane were killed. What happened to Anne Frank was only part of what happened.”

Box agrees.

“Basically, anyone with an independent political thought was killed,” he says. “For a lot of folks, the Holocaust simply isn’t something they want to talk about.”

But Box sees this show as a celebration of Frank’s life rather than a rumination on the Holocaust.

“This is so not a gloom and doom show,” he says. “Anne was a funny writer who could be very sarcastic. I think this piece honors her indomitable spirit and examines how she kept up what she did.”

In conjunction with the local production, Andre Kesller — a Holocaust survivor and member of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust — is scheduled to speak after the Jan. 22 performance. Box hopes to take the show on tour, possibly to some Holocaust museums around the country.