A Special Wife for 2nd Story

By Jim Seavor

All roads may not lead to Warren but the ones that do should be a bit busier later this month – The 2nd Story Theatre opens its season with I Am My Own Wife, a play that won not only the Best Play Tony Award but also the Pulitzer Prize. And it’s of special interest to the LGBT community.
I Am My Own Wife is a fascinating look at Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and the efforts by playwright Doug Wright to uncover the truth behind her story.
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was born Lothar Berfelde in Berlin in 1928. As a young man, his father made him join Hitler Youth. Later, as Charlotte, she made it through the Communist rule, managing to not only preserve the family home but also turn it into a museum of everyday items. When a nearby gay bar was closed by the government she raided the site, removed everything and rebuilt the bar in her basement, where she continued to use it for its original purpose.
She died in Berlin in 2002.
Obviously, no one has seen what 2nd Story will do with the piece – rehearsals hadn’t begun when this was written. (The theater was dealing with a six-foot invisible rabbit.) But I have seen both the Broadway version and what a small theater did with the play in Cambridge, Mass.
While the Broadway staging of I Am My Own Wife was, to use artistic director Ed Shea’s word, “sumptuous,” the audience still had to imagine the different settings. The Cambridge production was essentially a bare stage.
That means that I Am My Own Wife should fit nicely into 2nd Story’s traditional approach of using little or no scenery to concentrate on the words.
Shea is quick to point out that I Am My Own Wife is as much about playwright Doug Wright’s experience recording the life of Charlotte as it is about Charlotte’s life. Wright decides that it doesn’t matter whether or not all he learns is true: a story is a story and how it influences people’s lives and how it changes them is what matters.
For this play Shea is returning to the stage to face a mountain of challenges – for one thing he’s the only person on stage. That means he plays more than 30 characters. Now, many of them are often represented by a line or two, but he must present Charlotte and Wright as fully rounded individuals – even when they share a scene.
It also means he has to memorize the entire full length play. (He was about a third of the way through when we met.) He talks of a trick to memorization that helps him. “I tend to memorize rhythmically … not the meaning of words but just the words and the rhythm of the words.”
Memorizing Doug Wright’s role is easy. He’s an American and the rhythm falls into place. Charlotte is difficult. Her speech pattern is that of someone who has English as a second language. The syntax is unfamiliar. And to make it a bit more interesting she was taught English by British teachers and that adds a touch of an English accent to the basic German.
Where did the title come from? The story is that Lothar/Charlotte’s mother commented one day that soon he would find a woman, marry and leave the house. The answer was “I am my own wife.”
And there are those questions the play raises. They include, Shea says, “Living as a transvestite [the way Charlotte referred to herself] is she exposing who she is or is she disguising who she really is? That’s one of the most interesting questions through the whole play. Is it total honesty or is it a disguise and deception?
Shea is considering having post-show discussions after every performance.

I Am My Own Wife opens in late September. The Sept. 24 preview performance is a fund raiser for the Providence Gay Men’s Chorus. Tickets are $15 through Arttixri.com or at the door. Tickets to the regular performances are $25. The 2nd Story Theatre is at 29 Market St., Warren. The number is 247-4200;  you can reach the box office at boxoffice@2ndstorytheatre.com.