“It’s a testament to what you can achieve with just pure conviction and fortitude – not apologising for who you really are, and the powerful effect that can have on the people around you,” says Ben Gerrard about his protagonist in Doug Wright’s solo play,I Am My Own Wife.

The piece details the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transgender woman who survived both the Nazi regime and Communist East Germany. This theatrical journey not only explores her controversial life, but also the notion of truth and the moral ambiguity that can accompany the basic will to survive.

Von Mahlsdorf’s formative years included being forced to join the Hitler Youth by her Nazi-toting father, and ultimately killing him after he threatened her at gunpoint. After being sentenced to imprisonment in a detention centre until the end of the war, it’s unsurprising that this young trans woman had already developed an iron will when it came to self-preservation. It’s on this point she is either praised or vilified, depending on which story you believe, when it comes to her life in East Germany.

“The truth about Charlotte is an enigma that lies somewhere between Doug’s idealised version of her and the reports that came out in the ’90s after the fall of the Wall that revealed her as a Stasi informant,” says Gerrard. “So there are human choices that happened within that journey that Doug tries to understand and the media at the time didn’t try very hard to understand.”

Needless to say, the revelation that Von Mahlsdorf had been feeding information to the Stasi – the East German department for state security – about friends and the patrons who frequented her museum during the Cold War was big news. The media at the time was incredibly damning, as were some of the reviews of Wright’s play when it began its initial run in 2003.

“The play is ultimately a tribute to Charlotte, but Doug does try to deal with her complexities and flaws as much as possible,” says Gerrard. “But ultimately you get a great sense of her utterly charming personality and how that really contributed to her survival. He’s really under her spell and that’s reflected in the writing.

“It questions to what extent we can believe the Stasi reports. The entire nation was under pressure to curtail themselves to the regime, and if you didn’t, there was a lot to lose. Charlotte had worked very hard for everything she had, to be who she was, to build her museum. In order to survive, the Stasi pressured her, and what I believe is that she made the decision to betray friends, but that betrayal was not done willingly, but under great duress. That’s my opinion on the piece and I think that’s reflected in our production. We really do embrace her charm, as well as her ultimately good intentions despite her flaws.”

I wonder whether, like the playwright, Gerrard himself also fell under Charlotte’s spell.

“To be honest, I did. I objectively came at it from looking at the Stasi reports about her and the quite damning evidence against her. But I read her autobiography and whilst reading the play and getting to know her motivation and the way she can rationalise what she did, I can only imagine what it must have been like to live the way she did under such duress. No-one is black and white, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of, but that doesn’t necessarily damn us overall. That’s what Charlotte represents to me.”

With this in mind, I Am My Own Wife forces audience members to reflect on what choices they would make under similar circumstances.

“I hope that’s a question that people will ask themselves,” the actor agrees. “They can weigh up what she’s done in the context she was in. Most people would have to wonder what they would do.”

Another fascinating aspect of the piece is the fact that Gerrard isn’t only playing Charlotte, but upwards of 30 characters – no doubt a challenge, but a fun one, to say the least.

“I’ve been filming the sketch show [The Comedy Channel’s Open Slather] where I’ve been playing a different character every day for a year, so that got me into the zone. I always love pushing my boundaries, so it’s fun getting to play with accents that in any other context a white actor would never get away with,” he laughs. “But it was awesome to get to work on and break down those accents to try and embody them in the play.”

I Am My Own Wife is also coming to Sydney during a time when transgender issues are at the forefront of cultural awareness. Thanks to women such as Caitlyn Jenner, these matters are literally front page news. The play aims to help raise awareness of the historical struggle of transgender men and women as well.

“Absolutely. I think until very recently these women have been delegated to the fringe of culture and society, and what Caitlyn Jenner represents is the beginning of a huge shift,” says Gerrard. “A story like Charlotte’s, in a totally different time and a much more judgemental culture than today’s, shows that someone was able to survive being themselves. This story is a testament to the hope that these women belong and have an incredibly special place in our culture.”

[I Am My Own Wife (c) Kurt Sneddon]

I Am My Own Wife plays at the Old Fitz Theatre until Saturday December 5.

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