January 2006

Dear Subscriber:

I HOPE that you all had a magnificent holiday season and that the coming year will be a glorious one for you, your family and friends. We begin the New Year with a most arresting and fascinating play: I Am My Own Wife, the 2004 winner of both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Spanning nearly 70 years and two oppressive regimes in the former East Germany, it is a remarkable story, remarkably told. Using only one actor, playwright Doug Wright brings to the stage 34 characters—including himself—to relate the complex and controversial life of a subject that has long gripped him—Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Full of funny and clever stories as well as foreign intrigue worthy of le Carré, this tale of survival recounts Wright’s exploration into not only the incredible facts of Charlotte’s life, but also her—and others’—perceptions of them. Through the shifting lenses of all these characters, we see the narrative of a life unveiled, not in a strict chronological sense, but in the often touching, sometimes unsettling, and always compelling way that Wright first discovered it. Simply put, the work is theatrical because Charlotte is theatrical. As described in a November 2005 article in Time Out London, she:

...was an author’s dream.  What a history:  Born Lothar Berfelde in the village of Mahlsdorf, near Berlin, in 1928, “she” was the son of a dear, genteel mother, and a fiendish Nazi brute of a father. Young Lothar liked two things best:  dressing up in girls’ clothes and collecting old junk.

These remained the abiding passions of this remarkable, enigmatic person who became, in her trademark house dress and pearls, the German equivalent of Quentin Crisp. In her teens, Charlotte claimed she served time for bumping off her abusive dad. She also dodged Nazi bullets, “rescued” furnishings (including, controversially, those of Jewish deportees) and other bourgeois cultural assets from the Stasi (for whom she was later “outed” as an informant) and defended herself against skinhead assault. Through it all she maintained a mania for antiques.

In 1960 the enterprising Charlotte opened a museum in a run-down mansion in Mahlsdorf, refurbishing the place like the punctilious period hausfrau that she was.  She stayed there for 37 years, eventually selling it and moved to Sweden. It seems fitting, however that she died (of heart failure) while visiting the mansion in 2002.

...She was unquestionably a survivor and, even before Wright began interviewing her in 1993, an utter, if sometimes elusive, charmer. The interview process lasted about two years. But Charlotte’s complexities and contradictions so overwhelmed Wright that he succumbed to writer’s block.  He shelved the material for more than half a decade.
It was only after a friend’s encouragement to, “write about what you know, which is your ten-year love story with a remarkable character,” that Wright got a theatrical handle on Charlotte. “As a character she risks being dangerously opaque. She was such a wily creature. I wanted to show her in all of her kind of maddening dimensions and not label her in any way.”

So Wright wrote himself into the piece “as a kind of bridge that grants the audience their own relationship with her, and allows them to evaluate her just as I was forced to do.”  ...Wright considers his play’s solo format wildly apt.  “Charlotte had to adopt so many guises in order to survive that it made sense for one actor telling her story to do the same.” Going solo yields a further theatrical dividend.  “I knew the actor would be wearing Charlotte’s simple black dress and pearls, as would every other character he enacted, by default. So transvestism would become the norm in the play instead of some exotic, distancing position, I liked that.”

Regarding his own feelings about Charlotte, Wright resists facile judgments. “She did something astonishing by maintaining a sense of identity and integrity in the face of the two most conformist regimes that Western culture has produced.  If she had to make what we might consider extraordinary and distressing compromises to do that, well, that’s a measure, in part, of the enormity of the challenge. Because I don’t think it was easy to survive the Nazis and the Communists in heels, if you were a boy.”

CONSIDERING HIS OWN complicated assessment of Charlotte, Wright had concerns about her reception as a dramatic figure, and in a June 2005 piece in the Los Angeles Times questioned:

Can my stage version of Charlotte boast the same charisma as the genuine article? Will the play attract an audience? Or will my leading “lady” be written off as a freak? I’m consoled by one thought:  Like the greatest and most enduring characters, Charlotte is larger than life. She reaches beyond the particulars of her time, place and idiosyncratic nature to embody lasting truths.

Her very life is a trope for history. A compulsive collector, Charlotte preserved the culture that she knew not by writing about it but by saving its remnants, precious objects that tenaciously survived the 20th century’s two most lethal regimes…In room after room of her homegrown museum, she kept a fractured, tumultuous country intact. (In 1992, the German Cultural Ministry awarded her a prestigious medal for her preservation efforts.)

This hobby makes her more than heroic; it makes her simpatico. Everyone has an aunt or grandmother who lovingly hoards—souvenir thimbles, perhaps, or Hummel figurines, or faded copies of Life magazine. Charlotte simply took this penchant to extremes; she preserved an entire slice of bourgeois German culture.

Charlotte has another, less visible collection:  the anecdotes she loves to share about her life.  In telling them over the years to tourists and journalists, she’s polished them to a high sheen, just like her cherry wood breakfront. When she recounts her time as a nervous teen in the Hitler Youth, or her imprisonment in a detention center, the tales have a rehearsed, carefully cadenced sound, rendering them precise and strangely implausible at the same time.  These narratives are every bit as precious to me as her antiques. They raise a fascinating, eternal question about the nature of history itself:  When is it pure, and when is it tainted by the private, sometimes covert agenda of the historian?

“But what about her transvestism?” I ask myself. “The pleated skirts, the prim stockings, the sleeves that taper to the cuff only to reveal large, thick, rough-hewn hands? To some, won’t this always render her exotic or, worse still, peculiar?” Once they’ve been demystified, however, even Charlotte’s sartorial quirks are no longer alienating. They become a point of commonality.  We all dress to convey our innermost selves:  a bright scarf for the bon vivant, sober pinstripes for the serious professional.  Our clothes announce our perceptions about ourselves:  baggy sweaters that say, “I’m worried about my weight!” or spandex tank tops that boast, “I actually use my gym membership.”

In her simple black dresses and restrained jewelry, Charlotte was merely expressing her truest qualities: a femininity in spite of her biological sex, an emulation of her beloved mother, a marked nostalgia for an earlier time, a reverence for simplicity. True, we don’t all count cross-dressers among our acquaintances.  But who among us doesn’t know a dandy, a clotheshorse or a fashionista?  In Charlotte’s seeming eccentricity, we see our own habits, writ large.

I reassure myself with another heartening fact:  Stories about outsiders are so popular that they’ve become clichés. In our hearts, we are all solo travelers, fighting against a sea of homogeneity—the runt striving to make the football team, or the homely girl who morphs into the beauty queen. What better tale than the awkward, effeminate young German boy, draped in his mother’s shawl, outsmarting storm troopers?  These anecdotes nourish our perpetual love affair with the underdog. Charlotte’s story reminds us that even our darkest insecurities can become a source of strength.

WHEN WE ANNOUNCED we were doing this play, I was asked often who was going to play this tour de force part. My response was and is Arnie Burton—he was always the person in my mind who could render this part and all of its nuances with great skill and interest. Those of you who saw Frozen in the Studio Theatre last season will remember Arnie’s unforgettable performance in that play. He is commanding and always intriguing. We are so pleased to have Arnie to play this part and equally thrilled to have John Going returning to direct. Going is familiar to many of you from his extensive work here, including The Importance of Being Earnest and many of our Shaw plays, as well as productions for The Muny and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Marie Anne Chiment has created a set design and costume that evoke Charlotte’s world and stories in a striking way, and F. Mitchell Dana and Joe Payne provide the lighting and sound for the show, respectively. The whole team has created an environment that Charlotte will invite you to enter—as you accept her invitation, know that you are going to meet one of the most intriguing real-life characters you have ever come across. The experience of this play is unique and somewhat hard to describe, but when you see it, you’ll know you’ve been in the presence of a most fascinating character—one that certainly belongs on the stage.

OUR SECOND STUDIO Theatre production, Yellowman, opens on January 18th. Dael Orlandersmith’s lyrical and moving story about two souls of the south realistically explores the challenges of internal racism via the relationship shared between a dark-skinned African-American woman and her life-long friend, a light-skinned African-American man ("yellowman" in the local parlance). The play taps difficult issues with beautiful language and provides some unexpected turns along the way. Carsey Walker, Jr. portrays Eugene and Julia Pace Mitchell plays Alma. Susan Gregg directs the show, with set and lighting design by Michael Philippi and costumes from Clyde Ruffin.

THE SPECIAL EXPERIENCE you will have with Charlotte and the myriad of other characters that Arnie Burton portrays in I Am My Own Wife will make for memorable theatregoing, and Yellowman brings a poetic sense and depth of understanding that is rarely seen in plays dealing with this subject matter. Both works will give you much to discuss.

I look forward to seeing you at the theatre.

Steven Woolf
Artistic Director

NEW YORK REPORT: The Color Purple is brilliantly performed by a radiant cast. The show is very moving and worth seeing. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if there have been major omissions or not—certainly the contraction from a novel to a stage project is going to shorten some things. But I think it’s a very enjoyable experience. I also saw a fiercely-performed play off-Broadway called In the Continuum, which takes a slightly abstract look at HIV-AIDS by paralleling the lives of two women—one African-American and one African—who have recently been diagnosed with HIV. These actors are doing remarkable work in a powerful piece focusing on those most affected by this disease both here and around the world. If anyone is traveling to London in the near future, the production of Mary Stuart in the West End is outstanding. Mike Leigh’s 2000 Years at the National is interesting, Once in a Lifetime at the National is lots of fun, and The History Boys is a magnificent play. Billy Elliot is a remarkable piece of musical theatre. And the word is, though I wasn’t able to see it, that there is a very unique production of Sunday in the Park with George at the Fringe theatre, the Menier Chocolate Factory.

We are currently taking reservations for our London Trip this spring which runs from May 14–21. If you would like to join me and a group from The Rep please call Barbara Harris at 314-968-7340 for details. It is a great time!

P.S.:  Don’t forget that January 3-8, Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues fame will be performing her illuminating, honest and very funny new one-woman show, The Good Body, at the Edison Theatre on the Washington University campus. Tickets may be purchased through MetroTix at (314) 534-1111.

The Arts and Education Council is honoring Rep veteran Joneal Joplin with its Lifetime Achievement Award at their annual awards banquet on January 30th. If you would be interested in attending you can get ticket details by calling A&E at 314-535-3600.

See Valerie Harper in Golda’s Balcony

The Rep is proud to present Valerie Harper in Golda’s Balcony, a riveting portrait of Golda Meir and the award-winning smash hit play that just completed 15 sold-out months on Broadway, in three performances only April 21–23, 2006 at the Fox Theatre.

Rep subscribers receive priority seating, an opportunity to buy tickets before they go on sale to the general public, and a special discount at a select performance of this production. Download the mail order form below to take advantage of this exclusive offer!

Click here to download a printable ticket order form for this special offer. Order today! Tickets go on sale to the general public on February 26!