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Weaving Charlotte’s webOriginal Broadway production premieres in D.C.
By PATRICK FOLLIARD It was summer of 1992, several years after the Berlin wall fell, when gay playwright Doug Wright received a call from an old friend who was working as a journalist in the German capital. He had come across an eccentric cross-dresser, perhaps an intriguing dramatic subject for Wright. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was a 60-something transvestite who had survived both the Nazis and Communists, two very conformist regimes. At the time, she was living in a rural suburb, passing her senior years tending to an impressive hoard of 1890s collectibles, and leading tours through her stone mansion that doubled as a museum. She also enjoyed her growing reputation as a queer activist. Born Lothar Berfelde, in 1928, Charlotte identified while still a teenager as a female spirit trapped in a male body, and openly cross-dressed most of her life. According to Charlotte, she bludgeoned her abusive Nazi father to death, escaped prison, and later evaded the strong arm of the oppressive Stasi, the East German secret police. In 1993, Wright traveled to Germany. The first night that he met Charlotte, he realized that her story merited a play. “Her story was so singular and compelling, and it seemed to involve all the major events of 20th century European history,” says Wright, during a telephone interview from his home in Manhattan. Fast forward to 2004: Wright’s one-person drama “I Am My Own Wife” wins every award that Broadway has to offer, as well as the Pulitzer Prize. Wearing a simple black dress and pearls, Jefferson Mays portrays Charlotte, and about 40 other characters to great acclaim. Moisés Kaufman is hailed for his exquisitely precise direction. The leap from first meeting to hit play was not an easy one. It took nearly 10 years for Wright to structure the play. After interviewing Charlotte over a two-year period, the besotted writer obtained her Stasi file in 1994. Wright was surprised to learn that his heroine was a longtime informant. For the playwright, the revelation induced paralysis. Coming from outside of a culture where Charlotte was beloved —her autobiography was a bestseller, she was the subject of gay filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim’s popular film, and an icon in the Berlin’s gay community — Wright had no desire to be the snitch. Instead, he put away his two-dozen micro-cassettes, 500 pages of transcription, and the Stasi file. He chose to sit on the story. The breadth of Charlotte’s story also blocked Wright. He felt ill equipped to handle the sweeping scope of World War II and the Cold War, both integral to Charlotte’s story. A few years later, the German press got wind of Charlotte’s alleged duplicity. Initially, many felt betrayed by their “Trannie Granny,” but when it turned out that half of the East Germans had informed to survive, the issue was mostly put to rest. Only then did Wright feel comfortable in pursuing the shadier Charlotte. In the meantime, Wright had written “Quills,” the successful play and screenplay, about the infamous Marquis de Sade. At a writer’s retreat in 2000, a friend suggested that Wright approach his mountain of notes on Charlotte as the love story that it truly was. Suddenly, he was no longer blocked. Wright issued forth his obsession with Charlotte, warts and all, and “I Am My Own Wife” began to take shape. Later, at the Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah, Wright brought Kaufman and Mays on board. According to the playwright, the show is truly a collaborative effort. Wright, 42, credits much of the play’s success to Charlotte’s charm, which Mays masterfully brings to the stage. “Part of it was her simplicity,” he says. “To the average straight couple from the provinces who visited her museum, she wasn’t threatening. She was polite, and dressed in a proper neuter fashion. But like so many of us who have been subjected to vicious treatment as we live our lives, she was nonjudgmental and compassionate in a way that only the socially beleaguered learn to be. She welcomed everyone, and shame on them if they didn’t respond in kind.” Today, the veracity of Charlotte’s personal mythology remains unclear. Did she murder her father? Was she innocent of betraying a friend to the Stasi? She died in 2002. For Wright, the details are unimportant. “Historians strive for the truth,” he says. “At the same time, the stories she told and deliberately embellished were her own attempts at conveying what for her was a very real psychological truth. She lived with the fictions for so long that she had come to believe them herself. She didn’t lie to me, but she rarely told me the exact facts. That was the final accommodation I made.” MORE INFO # # # # # |
