I Am My
Own Wife.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, the one-actor play I Am My Own Wife is the fascinating and extraordinary true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an East Berlin transvestite and celebrated antique dealer who survived two of the last century’s most brutal regimes—the Nazis and the Communists. Playwright Doug Wright developed the piece from a series of in-person interviews with the central character.

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Easily the greatest artistic challenge I have ever undertaken as an actor, this play stretched me creatively to new levels, navigating decades of complex European history by embodying 37 characters of varying gender orientations, ages, and nationalities, as well as the requirement to speak in three languages and numerous dialects. I commenced intense research (including with native speakers) months before initial rehearsals. This included a work intensive in New York City with the playwright himself, Doug Wright. He was incredibly generous with his time and creative input, even to the point of sharing his original source material tapes of interviews with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf! Outside of the original Broadway production (for which actor Jefferson Mays earned a Tony), Doug had never collaborated directly with an actor on what he labels himself a “monster of a play,” and it was an indescribable honor that gave me a direct insight into the man who is actually the narrator of the piece. A brilliant and humble individual, my experience of working one-on-one with him gave me a sense of the lens through which he viewed the experience and informed how I played him in the show immensely. 

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The play’s message of inclusivity across time is so powerful and profound, and I felt the obligation to make the performance about that message. I leaned heavily on some advice I had gotten from Oscar-winner Olympia Dukakis a number of years before: “Just tell the story.” Clearly and objectively. This was one of those situations where the writing was simply so brilliant that the actor just needed to do their homework and then “get out of the way” to let the play live. It would be easy for the actor to make it so about showing off their craft both vocally and physically. I specifically wanted to disappear into all of these people so that an audience never perceived Bob in any of the characterizations—they were just simply part of the epic story.

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This was one of three productions in which I took part that was originally planned as live theatre but then transitioned to the streaming platform due to the pandemic. While I deeply missed the exchange of energy that an audience certainly would have brought to I Am My Own Wife, the streaming version was able to reach a much larger audience as a result of this national exposure at a time when audiences were LOOKING for recorded live theatre. And, as there is no recorded version of the play (except for the Broadway archival version limited to restricted viewing in the New York Public Library system), it was able to reach a new audience who would not be likely to go to live theatre to experience this iconic work.

 

I honestly believe this is my finest artistic achievement to date in my life.