About the Play:

Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play (2004), the Drama Desk Award for Best New Play (2004), a GLAAD Media Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Drama League Award, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show (2004).

I Am My Own Wife is an acclaimed one-man show by Doug Wright. This Pulitzer Prize-winning one-man play tells the astonishing true story of East German transgender woman Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who operated an antique business for years despite the encroaching dangers of the Nazi and Communist regimes.

I Am My Own Wife is an examination of the life of German antiquarian Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. A transgender woman and celebrated antiques dealer who against all odds managed to survive the two most oppressive regimes of the past century – the Nazis and repressive East German Communist regime – by hiding in plain sight, von Mahlsdorf was both hailed as a cultural hero and accused of colluding with the Stasi. Doug Wright skilfully uses more than 30 characters, himself included, to masterfully tell – through interviews, recollections of selective encounters, letters and song – the struggle and triumph of Charlotte's extraordinary life. A truly engaging and dynamic Broadway biography that will disarm and fascinate!

I Am My Own Wife premiered Off-Broadway in May 2003 at Playwrights Horizons and transferred to Broadway at the Lyceum Theater in New York City, a year after the death of the real Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and more than a decade before transgender rights would begin to make progress in the U.S. The play won the Tony Award in 2004 and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: originally performed by 1 male, it has also been performed by 4 actors

What people say:

"I Am My Own Wife is the most stirring new work to appear on Broadway this fall … both moving and intellectually absorbing." — New York Times

"I Am My Own Wife revels in a particular time and place, but it is more than a historical document. The play is a vivid portrait of a unique person whose ability to endure has been turned into a highly theatrical journey." — Associated Press

"…at once a vivid portrait of Germany in the second half of the twentieth century, a morally complex tale about what it can take to be a survivor, and an intriguing meditation on everything from the obsession with collecting to the passage of time." — Chicago Sun-Times

"…saucy, sagacious, entirely fascinating solo play…." — Village Voice

"…riveting theatre … the structure of the play is original, challenging, and involving." — BackStage

"A truly remarkable experience in the theatre, I Am My Own Wife is a must-see … an experience that is intellectual, theatrical, funny, and poignant … the integrity of his writing provokes us to think, it teaches us a history we never knew we had, and without forgiveness and sentiment unravels the story of one life." — The New York Post

About the Playwright:

Doug Wright is a Pulitzer-prize winning American playwright and screenwriter. His stage work – which includes such titles as I Am My Own Wife – has been produced in major cities across the US and the globe, among them, New York, Dallas, London, Stockholm, Budapest, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Sydney and Tokyo.