Long Wharf Theatre Steps Through a Door

Preview of I Am My Own Wife, Long Wharf Theatre

It was an unusual gathering on Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II last Friday. Assembled to discuss Long Wharf’s production of Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, which started previews this week and opens next Wednesday, was the entire creative team for the show, led in discussion by Patrick J. Dunn, Executive Director of New Haven Pride Center. In addition to Rebecca Martínez, the show’s director, and its star, Mason Alexander Park, the discussion included set designer Britton Mauk, costume designer Daniel Tyler Mathews, lighting designer Jennifer Fok, sound designer and original music composer Kimberly S. O’Loughlin, assistant director Kevin Paley, and cultural competency consultant Ianne Fields Stewart. It’s not typical by any means to meet the artists who undertake the technical feat of creating theater—most remain behind the scenes for a show’s entire run. What made the event even more unusual is the fact that Long Wharf has set a new standard by bringing together transgender artists to create the world of Wright’s Pulitzer-winning drama. The participants praised Long Wharf and its new artistic director Jacob G. Padrón for achieving a feat almost unprecedented: a play centering on a transgender person finds in this production an almost wholly nonbinary team.

And that’s significant because the version of the play at Long Wharf has been updated to reflect an awareness of trans persons lacking in the original version, which dates to 2003. The play incorporates aspects of the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf as revealed in her memoir, Ich bin meine eigene Frau, filtered through Wright’s interviews with Mahlsdorf and his sense of her life. Born Lothar Berfelde in Berlin-Mahlsdorf, Berfelde was imprisoned as a juvenile for the killing of his father, a Nazi who had threatened his son’s life. Released after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Berfelde became Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, residing in East Berlin throughout the era of Germany’s division and curating a museum of everyday objects. She died in 2002. The play, a one-person show, incorporates von Mahlsdorf into a story of Wright’s fascination with her life, in a script that features over thirty characters.

Jacob G. Padrón, Jennifer Fok, Patrick J. Dunn, Rebecca Martínez, Ianne Fields Stewart, Britton Mauk, Kevin Paley, Mason Alexander Park, Daniel Tyler Mathews, Kimberly S. O’Loughlin, at the Long Wharf Theatre, Stage II, January 31, 2020 (photo by Deena Nichol-Blifford)

The intention behind the changes to Wright’s play, undertaken with the author’s consent and encouragement, is to “to look carefully at how the show showcases Charlotte most positively” said Martinez. Park spoke of “two different plays”; in the original, Park said, there was a certain “sensationalism” in one actor—male—playing both male and female roles. In the new version, they said, the goal is a more faithful rendering of a “trans narrative,” to show “Charlotte’s journey and her truth.” Access to the extensive archival interviews with von Mahlsdorf led to “the discovery of Charlotte’s naughtiness,” sparking, the team hopes, “conversation around trans bodies and the sexual aspects of their lives.” Park spoke of how trans stories are “usually stories of tragedy,” and the new version of I Am My Own Wife seeks to replace a sense of “a challenging, dark life” with an experience of “an open, loving person.” The question of how a trans person lived—in Charlotte’s time—is certainly one of the fascinations of the play, and brought Wright to the topic, but the team at Long Wharf is determined that the show should speak of and to trans culture in the 21st century.

To that end, said Mathews, the costuming has become more colorful, drawing upon Charlotte’s tastes and tendencies and eschewing the black outfits adorned with pearls favored by the Broadway production that earned Jefferson Mays a Tony in 2004. There is also a collective effort to create, with sound and lighting and set design, the world of Charlotte, a collector, an antiquarian, a bon vivant, and, as Park said, “a person looking for love like anyone else.” O’Loughlin researched the recordings referenced in the script—von Mahlsburg was a collector of recordings—so that the music could be  “integrated into transitions” which feature “both ‘found’ and composed” music. Fok spoke of lighting designs “inspired by the many location shifts” in the script and an effort to present “how Charlotte sees herself contrasted with how she is seen by others.” Mauk stressed that the new production positions Charlotte “not as an object to be gazed upon, but a story to be shared.”

There has been a sense for some time in the trans community that the play needed to be revisited and the Long Wharf production is pathbreaking in meeting that challenge. Some of the changes are shifts in how the story is told, others, Martínez said, are conscientious toward the vocabulary and attitudes of trans identity today. Paley spoke of the play as not a documentary of Charlotte’s life, but one in which her spirit will be more present than in earlier productions.

Stewart pointed out that it is “not the norm” by any means that “even in shows with queer themes” so many trans artists would be brought in. She spoke of how her role as cultural competency consultant often puts her in the position of having to explain matters that are obtuse to cisgender teams and casts. Here, that’s not the issue, and that’s “refreshing,” as “the erasure of queer bodies onstage” is more typical, in her experience. Wright’s play, in Stewart’s view, can start “uncomfortable conversations,” producing “essential theater that tells stories in ethical, honest ways.”

The team acknowledged that one such conversation that needs to take place is about “the dominance of white cis men” in all aspects of theater, particularly in the technical fields. While it may seem non-controversial to bring in trans artists for a show about trans persons, restricting the expert work of trans artists to such productions relegates them to a special interest aspect of theater. It will be interesting to see if Long Wharf’s production of I Am My Own Wife, which runs from February 5-March 1, will be, as Stewart hopes, “a step through a door that leads to other things.”

Dunn, Fok, Mathews, Stewart, Martínez, Park, Mauk, Paley, O’Loughlin, Long Wharf Theatre Stage II (photo by Deena Nichol-Blifford)

I Am My Own Wife
By Doug Wright
Directed by Rebecca Martínez

Long Wharf Theatre
February 5-March 1, 2020

What's Up and What's Coming

Last week, Yale Repertory Theatre opened Carl Cofield’s lively, hilarious, and hi-tech version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night which features a very engaging cast. The show is up until April 6th. My review can be found here.

Sir Toby (Chivas Michael), Feste (Erron Crawford), Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Abubakr Ali) in the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Twelfth Night, directed by Carl Cofield

 On Monday, Long Wharf Theatre announced three of the four shows of its 2019-20 season, which will be the theater’s 55th. As the season that precedes 2020-21, which will be the inaugural season of recently hired Artistic Director Jacob G. Padrón, next year was billed as transitional, as Padron spoke of Long Wharf’s will to “lead a revolution that will redefine American theater.” Citing managing director Joshua Borenstein’s comment that “all great movements have local beginnings,” Padrón outlined the three characteristics his team looked for in choosing plays: 1.“Undeniable excellence,” 2. Plays that reflect the demographics of the city of New Haven (which is over 42% white, over 35% black, over 27% Hispanic or Latinx, and over 4% Asian); 3. Plays that are “in conversation with the world.” Padrón said, “the world is on fire,” and he sees theater as “a catalyst for social justice.” In terms of emergent strategies, theater can either be advancing and progressing, or regressing into stagnation. Padrón wants Long Wharf to be known for its inclusiveness, as a theater that welcomes everyone, for its artistic innovation, and for its ability to forge connections with community.

First up, from October 9 to November 3, is On the Grounds of Belonging by Ricardo Pérez González, directed by his longtime collaborator David Mendizábal of the New York-based Sol Project, of which Padrón is founder and artistic director, and which partnered with Yale Repertory Theatre on El Huracán, the opening show of the Rep’s current season. The play is a “breathtaking new story of forbidden love in 1950s’s Jim Crow Texas.”

In the Thanksgiving to Christmas slot is “a modern adaptation of a classic work” (that’s not the title, though sounds as if it might be). The play, yet to be announced, will be one “in conversation with new work,” in a production that “breathes new life” into an important, older work of theater.

The new year begins with I Am My Own Wife, by Doug Wright, a Yale grad, with a director still to be determined. The show is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play “about survival and identity” of a transgender person in East Berlin during and after World War II, with a single actor playing over 40 roles. February 5-March 1, 2020.

Mid-March to mid-April is The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh, a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. In its third production, the play, “inspired by the true story of America’s first female Chinese immigrant,” will be directed by Ralph B. Peña, a founding member and current artistic director of Ma-Yi Theater. March 18-April 12, 2020.

Work by a female playwright and a female director will by featured in The Great Leap by Lauren Yee, a Yale grad and member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, and directed by Madeline Sayet, a CT native noted for her work incorporating the stories and traditions of the Mohegan tribe. The play is “a thrilling underdog story of basketball and foreign relations in 1980s China.” May 6-31, 2020.

This week the Long Wharf’s current season continues with tonight’s press opening of An Iliad, Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s adaptation of Homer’s Iliad (in Robert Fagles’ translation), directed by Brooklyn-based theater person Whitney White. It’s a two-person play with Rachel Christopher as The Poet and Zdenko Martin as The Muse and runs unti April 14. My review can be found here.

Tomorrow night, Yale Cabaret opens its fourth annual Satellite Festival, which runs Thursday, 3/28, through Saturday, 3/30. My preview can be found here.

Tomorrow night, Thursday, March 28, Collective Consciousness Theatre opens its third and final show of the 2018-19 season, Marco Ramirez’s The Royale, directed by CCT’s Jenny Nelson, a play set in the racially segregated world of boxing in the early 20th century. The show runs 3/28-3/30, 4/4-4/6, and 4/11-4/14. For Brian Slattery’s preview go here.