I Am My Own Wife

The Wilma Theater opens its 2005-2006 season with the Pulitzer Prize and 2004 Tony Award winning I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright. Originally conceived for one actor, the true account of an East Berlin transvestite who lived through Nazi and Communist Germany is fully re-imagined by Wilma Co-Artistic Director, Blanka Zizka, who has cast two actors for this Philadelphia Premiere.

I Am My Own Wife follows a young American playwright’s attempt to write a play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transvestite who managed to survive both Hitler’s Gestapo and the Stasi, the East German secret police. Doug Wright became fascinated by this amazing character and began a quest to discover the truth about her life, through a series of interviews with her and an often contradictory Stasi file. How did Charlotte outlast her father, World War II, and the Cold War while preserving the history around her? In her own museum, amid a treasure trove of antique furniture, Victrolas, records and bric-a-brac from the late 19th century, Charlotte tells her stunning story of how, through cunning and charm, she defied the iron grip of two political regimes.