Former Sen. William Cohen’s wife’s play, “Anne & Emmett,” to receive new round of performances

Janet Langhart Cohen, wife of William Cohen, a Bangor native, Maine’s U.S. Senator from 1979 to 1997 and former U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001, wrote a play in 2009 called “Anne & Emmett.”

In it, she imagines a conversation in the afterlife between Holocaust victim Anne Frank and Emmett Till, a young man who was murdered in Mississippi in the 1950s because he was black.

Cohen’s play will receive two series of performances this summer: July 28-30 at Metro Stage in Alexandria, Virginia, and Aug. 1-3 at the 2017 National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The play has not been performed since 2014.

Langhart Cohen is a journalist, author and former model, who after a career in television broadcasting went on to publish two memoirs, including “My Life in Two Americas; From Rage to Reason” and “Love in Black and White,” co-written with William Cohen, about their interracial marriage. “Anne & Emmett” is her only play, and explores themes of racial persecution from the perspective of an African-American and a German Jew, both teenagers at the times of their murders. She married Cohen in 1996.

Emily Burnham

About Emily Burnham

Emily Burnham is a Maine native, UMaine graduate, proud Bangorian and a writer for the Bangor Daily News, where she's worked since 2004. She reports on everything from local bands to local food to all the cool things going on in the Greater Bangor area. In her quest for stories, she's seen countless concerts and plays, been lobster fishing, interviewed celebrities, hung out with water buffalo and played in a ukulele orchestra. She's interested in everything that happens in Maine.