Charlotte von Mahlsdorf collected the belongings of Jewish deportees during the Third Reich and made them part of her Gründerzeit Museum (pictured below) [click for larger view] Image by DETLEF PUSCH When Jewish people got deported to labor and concentration camps during the Third Reich one of Berlin’s most eccentric transvestites — Lothar Berfelde known as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf — bought or collected the belongings of Jewish deportees and made them part of her Gründerzeit Museum wrote “I Am My Own Wife,” about the cultural outsider The play has since been performed in 30 countries and is scheduled to come back to the United States for a run in early 2011 The Forward’s Henrik Eger asked the author about the plight of Jews in Berlin as seen through the eyes of Charlotte the flawed heroine of his award-winning play which hit a raw nerve with Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike How did Jewish theatergoers and critics respond to the fact that Charlotte apparently hoarded artifacts and clothing from Jewish people who had been deported Doug Wright: They no doubt found it as vexing as I did I have to note that Charlotte felt real compassion for the Jewish community Her first love was a fellow named Levinsohn She was also accused of furnishing her home (later her museum) with items stolen from Jewish homes during the terrible deportations during World War II And it’s true that she gave a huge record collection of largely Jewish music to the Jewish Museum in Berlin None of this excuses the fact that she may have appropriated Jewish belongings in a less-than-noble fashion Charlotte makes many references to Jewish culture Did you have a sense that she felt a bit guilty about having obtained items from Jews who were deported and that I think she felt an affinity for the Jewish experience in Germany How did you — both as a human being and as a playwright — cope with your growing awareness that Charlotte might have deluded herself or that she might have lied to you about the less-than-noble parts of her life I became frightened of actually putting pen to paper; I didn’t want to reveal Charlotte’s duplicity to the world and I didn’t want to “inform” on her myself I knew that these unwelcome complications in her character made her an even more compelling figure for the stage I decided the only true way to honor her was to present her with all of her vexing contradictions intact just as she presented furniture in her museum with its imperfections preserved Charlotte had trusted me enough to allow me to read her secret police file which contained the incriminating information [that she had betrayed her closest friend to the Stasi the secret service in communist East Germany who had pressured her to either give up her museum and go to jail or inform on others] and I didn’t want to betray her by revealing the story while profoundly unsettling for me as a person was a kind of liberation for me as a writer You’re one of the few American playwrights who introduces Magnus Hirschfeld one of the most important scientific pioneers who studied homosexuality and who was Jewish How widely known do you think Hirschfeld is in today’s America Magnus Hirschfeld is an overlooked hero; his library one of the most comprehensive collections on human sexuality in the world he’s mostly mentioned in passing as a precursor to Krafft-Ebing I hope the play brings him additional fame What else should people know about the play and about your work Seemingly marginal characters like Charlotte von Mahlsdorf make for compelling drama but surely we have a relative — a mother or a maiden aunt — who lovingly enshrines Lladro figurines in the curio cabinet but we all wear costumes of a certain sort: the pinstriped suit of the businessman So when audiences come to see a play about an elderly East German transvestite I hope that — by the curtain call — they’ve also learned something powerful about themselves My journey with Charlotte and her remarkable story has constituted some of the best moments of my life; she was truly a memorable figure theater critic and professor of English and communications at Delaware County Community College in Pennsylvania I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward American Jews need independent news they can trust At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S rising antisemitism and polarized discourse This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up Copyright © 2025 The Forward Association With a name inspired by the First Amendment 1A explores important issues such as policy and what connects us across the fissures that divide the country 1A's goal is to act as a national mirror-taking time to help America look at itself and to ask what it wants to be Charlie DelMarcelle as the transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf -- and as everyone else in "I Am My Own Wife," in the Theatre Horizon production WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. 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Learn more about Social Responsibility at WHYY Click here to read our spring 2025 issue, featuring Caught by the Tides' Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao, our annual spotlight on locations and more... we find ourselves in the peculiar position of publishing during a moment when theatrical access to movies During this suspension of normal filmwatching habits inviting them to find an alternate path to the movies by participating in a writing exercise engaging with any book about or lightly intersecting with film Today: Jessica Dunn Rovinelli on two trans autobiographical books turned into doc films Every book-to-film adaptation requires new aesthetic frameworks to address questions of emphasis and the new relationship between the viewer and text/image With documentary films adapted from autobiographical writings these questions take on a different flavor and urgency In the case of two written works by transgender authors and turned into documentary films by cisgender directors—one recent one not so much—books focusing on their own quixotic micro-fixations lead to films in which polyphonic concerns jostle for attention I’m considering two (semi-)autobiographical writings by two very different transgender writers both used as the basis for documentary films about their authors The first—Ich bin meine eigene Frau (I Am My Own Woman) published in 1992—is by the German author Charlotte von Mahlsdorf surviving through the Nazi era to the beginnings of the German gay rights movement It was adapted in 1996 into a documentary film of the same name by Rosa von Praunheim best known as the early German gay cinema director of the seminal It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse an undocumented Chilean trans feminine person who currently resides in New York City It presents a series of short stories taken from his life in which she details nights and sometimes days of heavy drug use fleeting moments of romantic intimacy and sex work (The author uses male and female pronouns interchangeably throughout.) His life was documented in the 2019 film El viaje de Monalisa (The Journey of Monalisa) the debut feature of the New York-based Chilean director and actress Nicole Costa a diaristic form is combined with a fairly huge disinterest in the questions of identity transition and selfhood so central to much work by and about transgender individuals the question of womanhood is not the central through-line of I Am My Own Woman specifically from the Gründerzeit period in early 1900s Germany and Austria The novel begins with von Mahlsdorf’s childhood and apprenticeship with an antique salesman As it proceeds through the Nazi era and its aftermath I Am Not My Own Woman devotes far more pages to descriptions of furniture the bureaucratic nightmares of running a furniture museum than any of the questions its title might imply It is the story of a woman in relation to the history of a nation who rescues pre-Nazi furniture and cherishes it who tries to bring it into the present in all its specificity It is an ode to the curves and lines of Gründezeit craftwork as woven through the life of a woman who must navigate her own relationship to her family and nation in order to maintain her relationship to furniture enters into her autobiography mostly in relation to her relationship with her transgender male “aunt,” who dresses her explains the existence of homosexuals and gender-divergent persons and aids in defending her mother from her abusive father von Mahlsdorf’s existence as a transgender person is reduced simply to a woman in a man’s body who prefers to wear women’s clothing and not be questioned further Transition is never on the table given historical This gender role is also linked in many ways to her role as a passive partner into BDSM homosexuality with men she is imprisoned rather than sent to war as a Nazi soldier on the basis of her gender expression This moment is curiously underplayed in the autobiography as the prison is bombed and she is able to wander out of its collapsed wall—and von Mahlsdorf’s story must merge with von Praunheim’s concerns and cinema the film cuts between then-contemporary footage of Mahlsdorf maintaining her Gründezeit museum with the help of a lesbian couple and reminiscing about her life and heavily art-designed staged sequences depicting von Malhsdorf’s life in von Praunheim’s signature camp-influenced aesthetic The non-existence of a traditional “transition” with medical intervention having never entered into von Mahlsdorf’s life complicates the possibility of a traditional trans narrative so does the time of its filming in the ’90s the film oscillates wildly between a gentle observational style of documentary in the present day footage and a coming-of-age narrative built out of staged recreations shot in von Praunheim’s signature heightened camp aesthetic The present-day footage lingers on her relationship with her accepting lesbian assistants and the LGBT organizing von Mahlsdorf facilitates on the grounds of the museum she lives in and maintains The recreations follow a homosexual male sexual awakening arc recognizable from von Praunheim’s other features even as Nazi-era chaos provides heightened situations and cuts apart a clean narrative performativity of gender and the specifics or organizing take center stage with von Mahlsdorf’s physical presence—shockingly beautiful and gentle—given the primary stage but here it is also a locus through which history passes: in the clothes she wears the people she brings together and the history of her life Iván Monalisa Ojeda writes in the face of a cultural history that has learned its own narratives of transgender existence—and so Ojeda has an endless night and fleeting day of locas the minutiae of a life lived tearing around New York’s streets in a crystal meth lightning bolt but they so saturate her writing that they become beside the point use-value for a given sexual situation or monetary exchange This is fevered and beautiful minimalism and pointillism We never hear of transition as a process: we hear of boob jobs of a woman who finally looks exactly like the Chilean singer she idolizes of heels that will get you the tips you want when you know you’re looking for a guy who’s into BDSM—a writing of endless specificity who deserves an enormous amount of credit for her role in facilitating the publication of Ojeda’s writings finds herself documenting the author of these words Costa solves this by letting the words themselves take up a fair deal of screen time littering the screen with his writings and readings she too is making a film in an era that presumes to know what a transgender narrative is she cannot document the specific moments Ojeda’s autobiographical writings describe She wisely makes use of extensive and often explicit video recordings made over the years to fill the gap but they’re fragmentary in a less focused way brief glimpses into wild half-forgotten nights rather than Ojeda’s fevered as the market understands it and as most biographical documentaries dictate here this transition can only take the form of getting a “female” marker on an ID as Ojeda has already medically transitioned and not in a conventional or easily mappable way—her inconsistent use of hormones and disinterest in surgery wonderfully out of sync with broad cultural understanding contain in the phrase “Male to Female.” That same “F” marker comes tied to Ojeda’s movement from undocumented to documented It is also a film of resurfacing—Ojeda was known to small circles in Chile before essentially disappearing from the eye of the art world for decades—and Costa documents this return to a world of “art culture” in both Chile and New York Costa at once maintains the arc of transition while tying it to other movements between nations and markers that are linked to the specificity of Ojeda’s life the filmed version is an entirely different creation than Ojeda’s writing even more so than von Praunheim’s version of von Mahlsdorf It documents a coming-out into a literary world with the literary material itself providing emotion and context but tells a very different and more universally legible story of Ojeda’s life Neither film should be written off as bad—quite the opposite Both are interesting insofar as their directors find their own ways of navigating through a story written by and about an author whose works often seem to be evading the content for which audiences come to them for Each director offers up aesthetic tendencies that present an often interesting melding of artistic and social perspectives and each offer up fascinating looks at how a literary presentation of one’s own life survives and re-maps a documentary adaptation of that same life These are films in quietly turbulent dialogue with their subjects—Ojeda would have no issues with being described as a turbulent person there’s a fascinating pull of the mundane or the hyper-specific in the written works that escapes representation by the (cis) camera Is there a documentary cinema that can account for this mundane particularly one of the transgender person Can the body live outside the cultural narrative of its transformation New plays on two of Tampa’s professional stages probe issues of gender Both are designed to make the audience question the accepted way of things Actor Ryan-Patrick (RP) McLaughlin stars in the new Stageworks Theatre production Wright’s one-person show won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 It is the story of German transgender woman Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and was released from juvenile prison when the Soviets liberated the city in the closing moments of World War II Charlotte von Mahlsdorf founded the Gründerzeit Museum furniture and other utilitarian antiques from the period of rapid economic expansion that followed the foundation of the German Empire – roughly 1871 to 1900 She became a familiar and controversial figure in Communist-controlled East Berlin’s gay community Wright (also the author of Quills) wrote I Am My Own Wife from many hours of interviews he conducted with von Mahlsdorf RP McLaughlin – plays dozens of characters including von Mahlsdorf and the playwright himself Wright will participate in an audience Q&A following the matinee this Sunday For all details, and tickets, visit the Stageworks website here Christopher Marshall and James Putnam ponder what it means to be “Straight White Men” at Tampa Repertory Theatre In its 2014 review of Young Jean Lee’s dark comedy Straight White Men the New York Times called the script “mournful and inquisitive.” Four years later it became the first play by an Asian American woman to be produced on Broadway a different Times critic called it “smart and thorny.” Straight White Men follows three middle-aged brothers who gather at the home of their widower father at Christmas straight white men – “For so long simply the default humans,” the Times said “they now face all the indignities of life with a label.” The Tampa Repertory Theatre opened its production of Straight White Men last week at the USF Theatre Centre the young men are forced to confront their lifelong sense of identity and privilege directed from the sidelines by three omnipresent women workshops and explores themes of identity in her work “I realized the hardest thing for me to do would be straight white men identity,” she says in an online interview clip “because that’s not something that gets analyzed to death it was just like the default human position For all details, and tickets, visit Tampa Rep’s website here Add your idea below. Review Catalyst posting guidelines here. By posting a comment, I have read, understand and agree to the Posting Guidelines Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value" Students rocket toward STEM careers at community hub 2025 Florida legislative session extended through June 6 The Catalyst honors its name by aggregating & curating the sparks that propel the St Pete engine.  It is a modern news platform, powered by community sourced content and augmented with directed coverage your perspective and your spark to the St Pete Catalyst and take your seat at the table Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_4" ).setAttribute( "value" Privacy Policy | Copyright © 2020 The St Petersburg Group Enter the details of the person you want to share this article with She reveals why she left theater—and why she’s back Delia Kropp was asked to read both male and female parts She didn’t get the gig and later found out why “I wasn’t convincing enough in the male roles,” she says considering that Kropp lived as a man for much of her life Kropp began transitioning to a woman 12 years ago and in the process stepped away from theater she returned to play a transgender poet in Raggedy And Now the 59-year-old actress takes on a much bigger role—perhaps the biggest of her career—as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in the Pulitzer-winning drama I Am My Own Wife The play traditionally features one man performing all the female and male roles—35 characters total and three men will play the additional parts Both of your roles since returning to the stage have been transgender Do you hope to play traditional female parts as well partly because there just aren’t that many transgender roles but more importantly because I acknowledge that I’m trans but I identify as female Getting those female roles is still an obstacle I’m older and I’m trans female So I need to make my own opportunities whenever I can Transgender people need to start telling the stories that are about our humanity But I am not comfortable going back and forth over the gender lines for roles I shot an email over to the About Face artistic director and I said I’d like to play Charlotte and only Charlotte I feel the public already has skepticism about the authenticity of our identity has noted that having one actor perform all the roles speaks to the way Charlotte adopted various guises to survive during World War II But it becomes a story about the characters and a lot less about the virtuosity of the actor The focus becomes one transgender person’s efforts to survive and live her truth under very difficult circumstances Why did you decide to take a hiatus from theater It’s hard to get roles when you’re transitioning and I wasn’t 100 percent female in my presentation during much of that time I went through my gender-neutral phase as Dee But the real reason I stepped away from the theater was that I needed to step away from everything that was seriously associated with my male identity From the time I got my name change in 2011 and started living full-time as me—going to the women’s bathroom as me and dating men as me out in public—I was like I’ll bet I would be even better onstage now; I feel more grounded and rooted Performing for the first time as a transgender actress in Raggedy And—what was that like It confirmed what I was able to feel in auditions and staged readings—that when you build a character on who you really are So it was thrilling for me to go out on that stage with that kind of confidence knowing that I was delivering a real flesh-and-blood human being and could be alert and alive to everything onstage I was cast as a female in a reverse-gender version of Edward II The directors told me that was by far my best work But really the whole thing started around 2004—because I was extremely unhappy I was to the point where if I couldn’t figure something out I started considering this just to save my life it liberates you in a way—one less thing telling you who you are or aren’t I felt strong enough to come out to my family GO:I Am My Own Wife runs November 4 to December 10 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. $10 to $40. aboutfacetheatre.com Tags: , Chicago magazine newsletters have you covered the child born in 1928 as Lothar Berfelde was already identifying as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf Dressed as the woman she felt herself to be she lived most of her adult life in East Germany.  It’s hard enough being gender fluid in Trump’s America That Charlotte survived the Nazis and the Stalinists — living through the fall of the Berlin Wall and into the early 21st century — seems impossible.  “You shouldn’t even exist,” writes a character named Doug, stand-in for playwright Doug Wright in his Pulitzer-winning “I Am My Own Wife.” With actor Michael Stebbins playing Charlotte, Doug and 33 other characters, it’s now on stage in a just-opened Theatre Gigante production being directed by Isabelle Kralj.  Those characters include Charlotte’s loving lesbian aunt and abusive Nazi father; the SS commander who contemplates shooting Charlotte; officials from East Germany’s Gestapo-like Stasi who interrogate her; and Doug — who has many reasons for identifying with someone like Charlotte There’s no quick-change costuming; with one significant exception every character is presented through a 60-something wearing pearls but dressed in austere black from her kerchiefed head to her orthopedic black shoes This costuming boldly suggests that it’s the transgender person who is the norm — and who plays at being other characters much as each of us constructs identities featuring normative notions of gender “I wear your clothes and you wear mine,” Charlotte says at one point to Doug Using one actor to impersonate all 35 characters underscores how Charlotte’s continual shape-shifting was integral to her survival Her bobbing and weaving included four years in the 1970s as a Stasi informant; as Charlotte tells a questioning Doug “never forget that you are living in the lion’s den Sometimes you must howl with the wolves.”  it’s one of many moments that doesn’t fully capture Charlotte’s theatricality conflict and emotional range — this Charlotte is a bit too saintly Stebbins credibly embodies Charlotte’s hard-won equanimity But he doesn’t always dig deep enough to register the psychic cost of her various dodges and betrayals Much of Charlotte’s peace and stability came through the beautiful objects she acquired phonographs and furniture to an entire Weimar cabaret  People might betray Charlotte; objects never did Stebbins describes some of those objects as he presents them through beautifully crafted doll-house miniatures; he also shares scratchy recordings from a bygone era  “The music would pour through the horn and make things better,” Charlotte dreamily tells us as this remarkable survivor continually did that imagination can sometimes transcend history.  “I Am My Own Wife” continues through Oct. 7 at UWM Kenilworth Studio 508, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For tickets, visit theatregigante.org. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com The backstory: As we learn early in the first act of this two-hour play Wright conducted a series of interviews with Charlotte in the early 1990s within the mansion that she’d converted into a museum to house her objects He was in his early 30s; Charlotte was in her mid-60s There’s an element of hero worship in the way this Dallas-born gay man living in the long shadow of AIDS in a much more repressive era looks up to an icon who’d managed to survive under even more trying circumstances One of the many impressive things in this well-wrought script is Wright’s willingness to admit his compulsive need to believe in the sometimes fictionalized version of Charlotte she presents to the world — her excuses for being a Stasi informant very much included “I Didn’t Lie in My Heart”: The line belongs to Blanche DuBois; it might as well apply to Charlotte who has conjured the ghost of Tennessee Williams for me on each of my viewings of “I Am My Own Wife” (including one with Jefferson Mays and Michael Gotch’s Charlotte in the excellent 2008 production at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater) Charlotte uses the imagination to set herself free; her lies are made in the service of a greater truth regarding who she is Or as Williams put it so well in “The Glass Menagerie,” “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”  Naming names: I don’t mean this as a defense of Charlotte’s role as a Stasi informant But I do mean to suggest that the choices we make and why we make them are more complicated than moralistic One of the most shameful moments in Hollywood history involves the many actors who refused to applaud when an 89-year-old Kazan received his justly deserved award for lifetime achievement at the 1999 Oscars.    A living museum: “When families died I became this furniture,” Charlotte tells us "When the Jews were deported in the Second World War When citizens were burned out of their homes by the Communists I became it.” It’s a striking way of putting things derived from the way Charlotte translated the past tense of the German verb “to receive” — bekam — into English when speaking with Wright Charlotte truly did both receive and become the objects she inherited channeling them and their history as fully as her recordings preserved the music of another age Preserving objects from the past — even when bruised and broken — became Charlotte’s way of remembering the many unique histories giving each of those objects an aura and Stebbins’ awareness of what this means and why it matters is what’s best in this production.  In praise of Doug Wright: In addition to Charlotte in “I Am My Own Wife,” Wright’s plays commemorate characters like the Marquis de Sade (“Quills”) and Marcel Duchamp (“Interrogating the Nude”) He’s written the book for musicals including “Grey Gardens” (about eccentrics Big and Little Edie Beale) “War Paint” (about cosmetics titans and rivals Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein) and “The Little Mermaid.”   “Mostly I’m compelled by outsiders,” Wright said in an interview “People who were marginalized in their own cultural moment … I adore characters who are unapologetically ‘different’; they teach us so much about ourselves.” Like Charlotte most of the characters featured in these and other Wright scripts are messy and conflicted; as Wright candidly admitted with regard to Charlotte’s Stasi period its inclusion in his play rescued Charlotte from being a benign “Trannie Granny.” She’s a person as Wright has continually done throughout his distinguished career that just because people are different doesn’t mean that they’re either simple or singly dimensioned Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Exit Stage Right is bringing back the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play I Am My Own Wife to the Maltese stage this month was previously performed 10 years ago to rave reviews and is being revived due to popular demand Based on the true-life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002) the play will be performed at Theatre Next Door The play recounts the story of Charlotte who identified as a woman from an early age and was perfectly comfortable wearing demure black dresses with a string of pearls as her only accessory She had a passion for furniture of a certain period which she salvaged from bombed houses in Berlin during World War II and eventually opened a museum She became Germany’s most celebrated transgender woman and a decorated national hero questions later arose as to how Charlotte not only evaded both the oppressive Nazi and Communist regimes of East Germany while running a gay and lesbian nightclub in her cellar right under the noses of the Stasi – the GDR’s notorious secret police Did her survival require her to make some morally dubious choices along the way This piece of theatre – “a one-woman show performed by a man” – requires the protagonist to play Charlotte together with Charlotte’s perspective of some other 35 different characters who existed in her life at significant moments and who are Alan Paris flits seamlessly in and out of all these characters bringing them to life in a dizzying display of theatrical bravura I Am My Own Wife will be staged at Theatre Next Door from November 17 to 26 at 8pm visit tnd.com.mt/whats-on/i-am-my-own-wife please register for free or log in to your account Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time If there hadn't been a real Charlotte von Mahlsdorf But would a writer of fiction be bold enough to create a character that was a transgender woman who survived a violent childhood and 50 years under the combined forces of the Nazis and the Communists only to emerge as a queer pride symbol in the reunified Germany Actor Ben Gerrard plays transgender woman Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in I Am My Own Wife at the Old Fitzroy Theatre.Credit: Kurt Sneddon as the American playwright Doug Wright discovered He visited her in her own museum of Germanic bric-a-brac which included a complete reconstruction of a Weimar cabaret in the basement Entranced by what seemed to be an astonishing story of survival Wright went on to record hundreds of hours of interviews But the more deeply Wright probed into von Mahlsdorf's story the more complex and compromised a figure she became Was her survival and huge collection of "bourgeois cultural assets" the result of exploitation of others' misfortune or because she covertly worked as an informer for the notorious East German ministry of state security "The play is about what it costs some people to live an authentic life," says Shaun Rennie Wright's account of his relationship with von Mahlsdorf "It's about Charlotte's struggle but it's also a playwright's struggle "Doug has written himself into the story and in it you see him having to deal with an idol who has fallen off her pedestal." is a tour de force for a single actor playing more than 30 characters but I see it more as an empathic challenge," says actor Ben Gerrard "I think if you can come to a piece like this with a sense of empathy from always having listened to people and watched people and been fascinated by people it becomes more a piece about transformation than acting." Gerrard's experience in TV sketch comedy stands him in good stead "Ben has been shooting [TV comedy show] Open Slather down in Melbourne all year so he's used to playing multiple characters all day The play needs an actor who can play 35 different roles and move between them in a blink It's been incredible to see all these characters drop in I Am My Own Wife is Rennie's second production as a director his first being the intimate staging of the Broadway smash Rent at the Hayes Theatre Company recently which garnered good reviews and played to full houses "I'm very excited by the way things are turning out," says Rennie who is better known as a musical theatre performer and organiser of the annual Light the Night benefit concerts for leukaemia research "I haven't hung up my shoes completely yet but directing is an area I want to explore." Working with Gerrard – who is Rennie's off-stage partner – has been an eye-opener "He's enormously experienced and I'm very much the new director I knew there would never be a point at which I would be teaching him how to act It's really just my job to tailor the production around him It's been an amazing process to go through as a couple." And less like hard work than you might think "It's great to have a director who knows the way you move and the way you speak It's also given us something to talk about over breakfast." I Am My Own Wife runs from November 17 to December 5 at the Old Fitzroy Theatre If there hadn't been a real Charlotte von Mahlsdorf But the more deeply Wright probed into von Mahlsdorf's story Was her survival and huge collection of \\\"bourgeois cultural assets\\\" the result of exploitation of others' misfortune or because she covertly worked as an informer for the notorious East German ministry of state security \\\"The play is about what it costs some people to live an authentic life,\\\" says Shaun Rennie Wright's account of his relationship with von Mahlsdorf \\\"It's about Charlotte's struggle but it's also a playwright's struggle \\\"Doug has written himself into the story and in it you see him having to deal with an idol who has fallen off her pedestal.\\\" but I see it more as an empathic challenge,\\\" says actor Ben Gerrard \\\"I think if you can come to a piece like this with a sense of empathy it becomes more a piece about transformation than acting.\\\" Gerrard's experience in TV sketch comedy stands him in good stead \\\"Ben has been shooting [TV comedy show] Open Slather down in Melbourne all year so he's used to playing multiple characters all day It's been incredible to see all these characters drop in I Am My Own Wife is Rennie's second production as a director \\\"I'm very excited by the way things are turning out,\\\" says Rennie \\\"I haven't hung up my shoes completely yet but directing is an area I want to explore.\\\" Working with Gerrard \\u2013 who is Rennie's off-stage partner \\u2013 has been an eye-opener \\\"He's enormously experienced and I'm very much the new director It's really just my job to tailor the production around him It's been an amazing process to go through as a couple.\\\" \\\"It's great to have a director who knows the way you move and the way you speak It's also given us something to talk about over breakfast.\\\" while Jefferson Mays's prize-winning performance deserves its plaudits I can't help feeling that Wright's play is over-worshipful and under-investigative Wright has certainly found an intriguing subject: the life and times of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf Surviving both the Nazis and the communists from 1960 the cross-dressing Charlotte turned her Berlin home into a repository of German culture clocks and her lesbian aunt's gründerzeit furniture Charlotte's museum even preserved a famous Berlin gay bar Charlotte became a national celebrity whose reputation was tarnished only by the discovery that she spent four years as a Stasi agent Clearly Wright's play is intended as a celebration of a sexual outsider who lived life on her own terms But it's hard to see how how Charlotte can be said to have "survived" communism when she collaborated with the regime although Mr Wright puts himself into the play and records his dismay at the discovery of Charlotte's Stasi links he nevertheless skates lightly over their implications Those of us who have never lived under a dictatorship are in no position to moralise Charlotte's betrayal to the secret police of a good friend and fellow antique collector Wright not only seems in thrall to his subject he also never investigates the reality of her life How difficult was it to live as a transvestite in a rigidly puritanical East Berlin although Charlotte turned her carefully preserved bar into a sexual meeting-house was she herself devoid of emotional entanglements By accepting Charlotte's version of herself Wright turns her into a gay icon: what he fails to do is penetrate behind the mask Even the excellent Jefferson Mays cannot entirely do that Clad in Charlotte's standard black dress and orthopaedic shoes May hints at her steely resolve and carefully articulated speech He also sketches in a wide variety of other characters - quite brilliantly in a TV chat-show where Charlotte's implacable dignity is contrasted with the host's vulgar applause-begging Mays even counterpoints Charlotte's female stateliness with his impersonated author's flaky nervousness although Moisés Kaufman's production and Derek McLane's design skilfully evoke Charlotte's marinated world there's a telling line when we're told "she doesn't run a museum you long to know what the museum was like after closing time "Art survives!" reads the graffiti on one of the still-standing slabs of Berlin Wall that author Doug Wright observes in this blend of biography and confessional The lengths some will go to ensure that art does survive makes it a powerfully interesting story Ben Gerrard performs 35 roles in I Am My Own Wife to tell the story of homosexual transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.Credit: Rupert Reid Wright's subject is a real person, the self-styled Charlotte von Mahlsdorf a homosexual transvestite who managed to outlive the Third Reich and 40 years of East German communism the von Mahlsdorf saga is the creative and finance-attracting "slam-dunk" he has been looking for He travels to Berlin to view von Mahlsdorf's "Grunderzeit" museum of German household effects from the "gay 90s" (the 1890s Wright sets about courting von Mahlsdorf in a series of letters She grants Wright a series of interviews during which she relates a seductive tale of survival against the odds: of life with her Nazi thug of a father; of her imprisonment for murder; of her near-death experience at the hands of the SS in the last days of World War II; of the Weimar cabaret she recreated in her basement as a secret dive bar for gay and lesbian East Berliners But exposed to the hard light of her celebrity in the reunited Germany Von Mahlsdorf's life story is revealed to be as polished as her collection of Edison phonographs not just by her unreliability as a narrator but by his own need to believe in a "bona fide gay hero" The original Moises Kaufman-directed staging I Am My Own Wife becomes less about bravura acting (Mays' facility was quite astonishing) and more about the actor – Ben Gerrard in this case – creating a sustained connection with the audience Wearing a severely demure black dress throughout and playing 35 roles Gerrard is graceful as von Mahlsdorf and he captures Wright's voice (which we hear in a recorded welcome from the author prior to the show) very well Some of the second-tier characters are less sharply defined and edge toward caricature though Gerrard's overall fluency and ability to flip between a slack-jawed American soldier and a gay antiquarian is impressive Designer Caroline Comino's set of semi-translucent paper screens made from redacted documents and official-looking paperwork makes for a moodily attractive backdrop The decision to use stand-in neutral objects for von Mahlsdorf's treasured collection of knick-knacks works well Lighting (Hugh Hamilton) and sound design (Nate Edmondson) are thoughtfully folded into a technically sharp production the only thing yet to be settled in director Shaun Rennie's otherwise secure reading is to whom Gerrard is speaking Middle distance delivery takes on an evasive quality in a venue the size of the Old Fitz Eye contact and a sense of our own presence as witnesses might allow us to become more immersed in Wright's dilemmas rather than sit back and have them explained \\\"Art survives!\\\" reads the graffiti on one of the still-standing slabs of Berlin Wall that author Doug Wright observes in this blend of biography and confessional the von Mahlsdorf saga is the creative and finance-attracting \\\"slam-dunk\\\" he has been looking for He travels to Berlin to view von Mahlsdorf's \\\"Grunderzeit\\\" museum of German household effects from the \\\"gay 90s\\\" (the 1890s Von Mahlsdorf's life story is revealed to be as polished as her collection of Edison phonographs but by his own need to believe in a \\\"bona fide gay hero\\\" I Am My Own Wife becomes less about bravura acting (Mays' facility was quite astonishing) and more about the actor \\u2013 Ben Gerrard in this case \\u2013 creating a sustained connection with the audience Gerrard is graceful as von Mahlsdorf and he captures Wright's voice (which we hear in a recorded welcome from the author prior to the show) very well though Gerrard's overall fluency and ability to flip between Designer Caroline Comino's set of semi-translucent paper screens made from redacted documents and official-looking paperwork makes for a moodily attractive backdrop The decision to use stand-in neutral objects for von Mahlsdorf's treasured collection of knick-knacks works well the only thing yet to be settled in director Shaun Rennie's otherwise secure reading is to whom Gerrard is speaking Eye contact and a sense of our own presence as witnesses might allow us to become more immersed in Wright's dilemmas rather than sit back and have them explained [attach id="253606" size="medium"]Alan Paris as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.[/attach] There’s something almost nun-like about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf walking through her celebrated museum in a pair of orthopaedic shoes and a plain black dress She talks about her antique furniture and carefully catalogued objects with an air of contemplative detachment she smiles and asks visitors for some small donation every inch a sphinx with an inscrutable secret But Charlotte’s secret was on display all her life – she never really did try to hide it Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was born biologically male From our first meeting with the central character it’s clear Von Mahlsdorf’s is a survivor capable of keeping true to herself despite the odds who gives the most riveting performance I’ve seen from him whose careful touch is evident throughout this well-crafted production I Am My Own Wife is easily the best play I’ve watched in Malta this year Paris constructs a performance that is respectful and intriguing but not afraid to confront the darker side of Von Mahlsdorf’s personality The audience is asked to join him on a journey where things are never quite as simple as they seem Paris explores the complexity of a single individual through the perspectives of some 35 characters presenting us with all the things one person can come to be in other people’s lives Von Mahlsdorf’s life is one of constant struggle – the story of a transgender woman’s survival under both Nazi and Communist regimes her story reaches beyond time and culture in an essentially universal message about freedom and the importance of being true to one’s authentic self von Mahlsdorf described herself as “a boy with the soul of a girl” a violent bully who terrorised his family and especially despised Lothar’s effeminacy protecting herself from one of his deadly attacks one night The teenager was sentenced to four years in a juvenile prison only released at the outbreak of World War II Coupled with allegations of being a Stasi collaborator during the Communist domination of East Berlin these difficult moments make von Mahlsdorf a challenging and altogether controversial figure audience members judge this transgender icon the other pivotal character in I Am My Own Wife is the playwright Doug Wright An unabashed admirer eager to interview her all set to write a heroic account of Charlotte’s life When he stumbled upon discrepancies in her story It was only after he decided to write himself into the play that the pieces fell into place and a pervasive sense of ambiguity the delicate balance between truth and falsehood contributes a key element that turns the play into an achingly human narrative where both Brimmer and Paris have come together to offer something especially fine The play’s title comes from 40-year-old Charlotte’s answer to her mother’s plea: “Don’t you think it’s time you settled down and found a wife?” With her same inscrutable smile Charlotte answered: “But Mutti don’t you know that I am my own wife?” Celebrated transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf is the subject of I Am My Own Wife the upcoming theatrical production by Exist Stage Right Amanda Borg speaks to director Nanette Brimmer about running this one-man-playing-one-woman show [attach id="251012" size="medium"]Nanette Brimmer and Alan Paris.[/attach] What lies behind the enigmatic title of the play I Am My Own Wife that of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928 - 2002) who was a homosexual man and a transvestite Charlotte lived as a woman and she is always referred to in the feminine Charlotte was far removed from the stereotypical cross-dresser almost cartoonish affectation of the outward trappings of femininity When I say that Charlotte lived as a woman When I wake up in the morning I am a woman dress for the day and go about my business She added no false accessories to her body – no wigs prosthetics or make up (she said she didn’t need any) Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was more of a natural woman than Dolly Parton wore heavy orthopedic shoes and always wore her pearls which is also the title of Charlotte’s autobiography refers to a statement she claims she made to her mother when asked why she hadn’t married translates to “I am my own wife”) Charlotte von Mahlsdorf is listed among famous women in European history Apart from being the most celebrated transvestite in German history Charlotte evaded not only the pogroms of Nazi Germany the long arm of the dreaded Stasi secret police of Eastern Bloc Berlin and the rampages of the resurgent Neo-Nazi skinheads but did so with panache and aplomb and in female attire It is this impossibility that draws playwright Doug Wright to her story Charlotte devoted her life to collecting everyday household furnishings from the period in German history known as the Grunderzeit She salvaged furniture and artefacts from bombed out houses and her collection eventually became the Grunderzeit Museum This led to her being awarded Germany’s highest civilian honour for her contributions to saving not only a treasure of Grunderzeit antiques but also the all but lost ‘queerilicious’ culture of a former Why would anyone write a play about a transvestite who ran a museum The play not only depicts a certain amount of 20th-century history but also sheds a light on understanding how adult sexuality can vary without hindering an individual’s productivity and ability to be a rewarding member of society Wright frames the play as his own quest to understand Charlotte and claim an important piece of his own history as a gay man But this is not a story about sex or sexuality This is a story about storytelling: “A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story Did she betray a fellow antiques dealer to the Communists simply to acquire his collection Was she really able to run a gay and lesbian nightclub in her cellar during the Communist regime Wright felt her stories should be told and wanted to bring them to the stage Charlotte explains that items in her museum must not be refurbished You look at a piece of furniture and it has a scratch you don’t ask how the scratch got there Wright asks the audience to accept Charlotte and her stories “as is” I suppose you could add that the message is also that we should accept people for who they are Any ‘uncomfortable’ parts of this play are not the ones that address homosexuality but those that present ongoing atrocities bred of human hatred and intolerance How about your own fascination with this character I Am My Own Wife opened in New York in 2003 and promptly won every prize available including the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for Drama I was lucky enough to watch it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival some five or six years ago and within minutes of getting to know Charlotte I knew I wanted to stage this play with Alan Paris As the actor morphed in and out of some 35 other characters Your caption reads ‘A one-woman show performed by a man’ and a few dozen other people – male and female These are the people who existed in Charlotte’s life at significant moments and are Just as a parent would read a fairy tale to their child so Charlotte adopts the character on stage This requires giving each person a distinct voice and posture and often a different accent Alan is a performer who has previously proven his talent for this sort of multi-character role in Stones In His Pocket I made sure each character was distinct and memorable you remember whether or not you have met that character before and Charlotte herself and many characters speak with German accents but no one should have any trouble making their way through the bilingual maze and Wright often provides immediate translations when the few and far between sentences in full German are uttered Alan took on this challenge very seriously and last summer enlisted the help of Irene Christ to assist him with the proper pronunciation he has not only managed to master the German accent but now revels in it Vault No.2 at the Valletta Waterfront – how did this space become a theatre I loved the vault as soon as I set eyes on it but it presented more than a few problems since it was just an empty space let alone lighting equipment for performances But the management have been superb in helping us every step of the way There was also a great deal of expense involved in the transformation but sponsors came to the rescue and provided comfortable chairs and antique furniture Several individuals loaned us some of the more difficult props to procure We have not turned the vault into a museum but the set implies that Rather than using actual lifesize furniture original miniatures Alan produces from a chest and presents as a guided tour of Charlotte’s museum We are lucky to be using replicas of the original Broadway production miniatures which designer Paul Eric Pape has rented to us I Am My Own Wife is showing at Vault No.2 at the Valletta Waterfront on Friday Tickets are available online or by calling 2122 3216 please register for free or log in to your account.