Cramped spaces, bodies pushed up against each other, hiding in dark corners of an attic — this is the environment Anne Frank lived in for two and a half years. The young girl logged her experiences of being trapped and eventually led to a concentration camp in her now-famous diary.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was published in the United States in 1952, and a critically acclaimed play based on the diary premiéred in New York City in 1955. In the late 1990s, Wendy Kesselman revised the play, and Riverside Theatre has produced this version as a part of its current season.

The Diary of Anne Frank will begin a three-week run at Riverside Theatre, 213 N. Gilbert St., today at 7:30 p.m. The show will continue through Nov. 8, with 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday shows and 2 p.m. Sunday shows. Admission ranges from $12 to $26.

The play is a coproduction with Cornell College, in Mount Vernon, and director Mark Hunter said it is an appropriate play for collaboration.

“It’s a very well suited play to blend student cast members with professionals,” he said.

Of the 13 cast members, eight are student actors, including the three major roles of Anne, Margot, and Peter. Cornell College junior Natalie Krops, a theater major portraying Anne, said it was fairly easy for her to get into character.

“Going into this role, I needed to look at it as any other character,” she said. “If I were to look at her as an icon, there wouldn’t really have been any way for me to reach her.”

Although Krops considers Anne as character, she also has a personal connection to the show because her grandmother was in the Holocaust. For that reason, she said, it is important for people to remember what happened to Anne and so many other people.

“It’s a real life situation being presented,” she said. “I think people can take away so much from it — it just depends on who you are, how you perceive it and your personal history.”

Hunter pointed out three significant differences between the adapted version Riverside Theatre is presenting and the original. The newer play restores Frank’s hostility toward her mother, her developing sexuality, and the characters’ Jewish culture, all of which were edited out of the original.

This version of the play uses Frank’s famous quotation, “All people are good at heart,” in the context in which she used it — acknowledging the brutality and horror of the Nazi persecution of Jews — whereas the original play uses it to portray a sentimental, uplifting message.

This adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank restores the complexity and realism of Frank’s situation — which deeply intrigued Hunter and Krops.

“It’s not cookie-cutter,” Krops said.

Despite the emotional journey the audience takes during the two-hour play, she said, the greatest thing about the show is the characters and the relationships that develop among them.

The play focuses on human nature, she said, something that people of all ages can relate to. For that reason, Hunter thinks it speaks to contemporary audiences even though it is about an event 60 years in the past.

“[The Diary of Anne Frank] speaks to people’s hearts,” he said. “It’s entertaining in the broadest theatrical sense and also deeply challenging and deeply moving.”