Doug Wright’s Masterpiece Spotlights Superb Trans SHERO

by Barry David Horwitz

“I Am My Own Wife” startles with beauty and grace. The solo show has lost none of its charm since bursting on the Broadway scene in 2003 and winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Oakland Theater Project has affirmed its position as a leading theater, remounting beloved works with a new twist. This play—featuring a solo trans role—is a sterling example.

In Michael Moran’s stunning production, we are equipped with fancy, glowing headphones, delivering a great soundscape. The stage set is a wall sized collage of broken furniture, painted white and set at crazy angles. A doll house sits center stage, elevated.

This is the real-life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a man dressed as a woman for most of her life, played elegantly by Renee Mannequin. Attired in her simple black dress with pearls, Charlotte sweetly presents her horrific childhood in Nazi Germany with a violent Nazi father and frightened mother. As a boy, he starts cross-dressing, after his liberated lesbian Aunt gives him permission. His aunt dresses as a man, the boy as a woman.

Playwright Doug Wright recorded the indomitable Charlotte in her home-made museum in Berlin where she lived through the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. Mannequin brilliantly plays Charlotte in a strong but subtle interpretation of Wright’s time-warping, masterful play. In addition, Mannequin plays 30 people who touched Charlotte’s long life.

Charlotte embodies decades of gay history and anti-gay history, exposing hatred with cleverness, subterfuge, and subtle defiance. Can we even comprehend what what price she paid for her refusal to conform?

Charlotte lived a terrifying life, standing up to both the Nazi’s and the East German Stasi. She was in Berlin when it was bombed by the Allies. She was awarded the Order of Merit by the re-unified German Republic, after being harassed for decades by police who fear those who dare to be different.

Charlotte deals with Nazi terrorism, East German oppression, and death-dealing homophobia. She lives in an old house where she collects old-style German furniture, especially old Victrolas and gramophones—with their lovely flower-shaped speakers. A perfect icon for beauty and persistence. She “turns into furniture,” as the decades roll by.

When challenged, she admits to being a boy—and somehow that saves her from the military, the Gestapo, the Stasi, the US occupation. She lives beyond regimes and out of time. Collecting becomes her. How perfect she seems for our times, too, as we wander the rubble of our home-grown totalitarian regime that will not allow difference or free speech or generosity to immigrants.

Doug Wright, the American playwright, flew frequently to Berlin where he interviewed Charlotte from the 1990s till 2022. Wright also appears as one of the fleeting characters embodied by Mannequin. The actor skillfully guides us through Charlotte’s super-sensitive consciousness as she faces incredible confrontations. Charlotte lives in fear, but finds surprising maneuvers to survive.

Charlotte survives in Mannequin’s soft, sweet “Granny-Tranny,” Mother of Liberation, Icon of Courage, Trans Shero. She is the hope and the model we need to stand up to illegitimate authority right now.

Bravo Renee! Charlotte still leads the way.

 

“I Am My Own Wife” by Doug Wright, directed by Michael Socrates Moran, assistant direction by Mylo Cardona, projections by Sarah Phykitt, set by Sam Fehr, lighting by Ashley Munday, sound by Michael Kelly, at Oakland Theater Project, Oakland, California. Info: oaklandtheaterproject.org – to April 13, 2025.

Cast: Renee Mannequin

Banner photo: Renee Mannequin (Charlotte). Photos: Ben Krantz Studios