I Am My Own Wife is a 2004 stage play by Doug Wright.
It is basically a stage Biopic of the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf
(1928-2002). Charlotte, born a biological male named Lothar Berfelde, feels from earliest childhood that she is a girl trapped in a boy's body. When she was still young, she kills her abusive father. Charlotte grows up and continues to identify as a female. She survives in a Nazi Germany that is extremely hostile to the LGBT community. With the end of the war Charlotte finds herself in communist East Germany. She becomes well-known a dealer in art and antiquities, and she creates her own museum—but, as the story eventually reveals, she makes some fateful choices along the way in order to protect herself.
The play actually follows author Doug Wright as he interviews Charlotte and finds out more about her life. It is a one-person show in which a single actor plays all the characters. Jefferson Mays starred in the original production.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: Charlotte identifies herself as a crossdresser or transvestite, but how she describes herelf, how she felt like a girl, sounds much more like she is transgender.
- Book Ends: The play opens with an actor playing Charlotte, showing off an antique wax cylinder phonograph and talking about how Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. It ends with an audio recording of the real Charlotte, giving the same speech about Thomas Edison that opens the play.
- Broken Pedestal: The nation of Germany has this for a little bit after Charlotte, who got a Medal of Honor for her part in preserving LGBT culture, turned out to be a Stasi informant who was paid for ratting people out with antiques, some of which are in her museum. Doug is rattled at discovering the truth about Charlotte, saying that he needs her to be the gay icon who stared down a Nazi firing squad while wearing a woman's coat and high heels.
- Could Say It, But...: One of the decorations in the gay bar that Charlotte has built in her basement is a sign saying "Prostitution Is Strictly Forbidden! At Least, According to the Police."
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe and with the Trope Maker. Charlotte appears on some cheesy celebrity chat show for an interview that turns serious when she starts telling the host about attacks from neo-Nazis. At the end, the chat show host says "We'll be back after a short break, with American singing sensation David Hasselhoff."
- Glasses Pull: An unconventional use of this trope early Act II, used as a scene transition. The actor, playing an old gay friend of Charlotte's named Alfred, writes a heartfelt letter to her. Then takes off his glasses, and with that the actor becomes Doug as he contemplates what he's learned (namely that Charlotte was the one who ratted Alfred out).
- The Münchausen: It's hinted that Charlotte may be this. Not only are her stories about how she came to be involved with the Stasi shown to not be true, she may have made up the story about killing her father, as German reporters can't find any records of either the crime itself or teenaged Charlotte going to jail as she claims. Doug himself wonders if Charlotte really escaped a Nazi firing squad like she claims.
- Present Tense Narrative: From the character Doug Wright, in the portions where Doug is telling the audience what happened.Doug: She ushers us into the foyer of the business. The ceilings are high, at least fifteen feet. We're huddled together like schoolchildren.
- Real-Person Epilogue: The play ends with an actual audio recording of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, reciting the same dialogue that the character Charlotte delivers at the beginning of the play.
- Self-Insert Fic: Doug Wright is a character, a playwright finding out about the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.
- The Stool Pigeon: Charlotte. She became a Stasi informer, ratting out both the people who came to the gay bar she ran in her basement, and people that she could turn over for dealing in illegal antiques.
- Title Drop: It comes when Charlotte's mother, who has still not figured out what's up even as Charlotte has passed forty, urges her to settle down and find a wife. Charlotte answers "But Mutti,note , don't you know that I am my own wife?"
- Trans Tribulations: Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, living as a trans woman in Nazi Germany and East Germany. Charlotte claims that as a teenager she narrowly avoided being shot by an SS squad, while wearing her mother's coat.
- Voiceover Letter: From John Marks of U.S. News and World Report, as he sends Doug Wright a letter recommending Charlotte as a character worth writing about. Then back and forth between Charlotte and Doug, considering the project.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In the last scene Doug tells the audience that Charlotte died in 2002 in Germany, after coming back for a vacation (she'd moved to Sweden).
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Charlotte the antiquarian makes one, recreating a Wilhemine-era gay bar in her basement. She says that the proprietors preferred gay customers because they were more orderly than straights. Charlotte explains that she bought everything in the bar in 1963 right before the East German authorities shut it down, and ran it in the basement until the fall of Communism.
- After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Charlotte visits West Germany and stops at a place called "Cafe Anal".
