'It's a call we artistic director types dream of getting,' says Eric Rosen, referring to a phone call he received last Spring from Moises Kaufman, director of I Am My Own Wife, the smash Broadway tour de force based on the true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived openly as a transgender woman in Berlin through the Nazi and Communist eras. 'I had heard that he was looking for a place to develop the play before its New York City premiere, and out of the blue, Moises called and asked me if I would consider coming on board to help him realize his vision [of this project].' That phone call was a dream come true for Rosen, artistic director of Chicago's own About Face Theatre, for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the play featuring a soft-spoken transvestite with a penchant for Victrolas and gramophones, has generated not a buzz, so much as a roar, among New York City theater insiders and critics. There's tentative tongue-wagging about a possible Tony nod for the play's solo performer, Jefferson Mays, who breathes life into a staggering 37 characters, while the editorial board of 'Best Plays' yearbook, founded in 1920, has officially anointed I Am My Own Wife as one of the 'top 10 legit works' 2003-'03 according to Variety.
The success of I Am My Own Wife, which fell to earth in early '03 as the featured production of About Face Theatre's Festival of New Plays (a national forum for the development of new works of gay and lesbian theatre) has Rosen positively beaming with pride, but it's his collaboration with Moises Kaufman (director of HBO's film adaptation of The Laramie Project), more than anything else, that is his director-dream come true.
'Moises has very generously said to me that he feels like he has found a true colleague in me, and I am flattered, because I admire his work so much,' offers Rosen, who served as the production's unofficial advocate 'and dramaturge.' I admire his work because we share an aesthetic and a style—sharply detailed design work, obsessive attention to every moment, a belief in the role of the unconscious and improvisatory in shaping the direction and creation of new work. He is one of the very few directors that, when I watch his work, I can see his hand without feeling oppressed by it. He is both extremely specific and extremely gentle in his storytelling, so the moments when you see the directorial hand, you don't feel that there is any showing off—no saying, look at me, look at my brilliance—but you feel his intelligence throughout this piece.'
'For me, the idea of About Face as a national resource to develop major new works by major artists [such as Moises Kaufman and Doug Wright, Wife's writer] has been hovering around for a couple of years,' continues Rosen. ' But the artistic success of Wife has helped me to better articulate what About Face can be. The success of Wife in New York only validates the importance of About Face as a home to our greatest artists working on LGBT issues, both locally and nationally. Of course the cache of having Doug Wright and Moises Kaufman singing your praises to The New York Times is also incredibly helpful in terms of developing new relationships with artists I'd like to work with. It also elevates our local work by Chicago artists to a national scale, which I think is critical for our future.'
Wright, perhaps best known as the writer of the play and screen-adaptation of Quills, calls About Face Theatre a 'safe haven outside of New York' allowing him the security and comfort to successfully 're-craft' the play. In fact, new scenes were introduced virtually every night during its Chicago run, according to the playwright, who says the team at About Face Theatre raised 'creative problem solving to a veritable art of its own.'
Extended twice in its off-Broadway run before making its Broadway debut at the Lyceum Theatre in late November, Rosen credits the success of I Am My Own Wife—whose story lacks the glittery trappings of more traditional holiday stagings—with the play's message of triumph over oppression.
'Times are dark right now—war, disease, the dismantling of social welfare, rumors of imperialism—and I think what's most stirring about this play is that is demonstrates the ways that history shapes us, and how we resist and triumph over oppression. Charlotte survived the two most repressive regimes in the 20th century and has now become an icon of that century that serves both to teach us about that history and also, I think, to better understand how our personal choices help us navigate the current political reality. Like Charlotte, all of us are implicated in the history in which we live. What's most inspiring to me, though, is how Charlotte, as a transgendered woman, can become the universal frame through which we understand that history. Isn't that cool—to have this 'granny tranny' as she is called in the play, transformed into an icon?'
