Playing Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf
Stephen Ouimette discusses the role in Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife
This is the second in a three-part series about Doug Wright's award winning monodrama I Am My Own Wife and the creative process of actor Stephen Ouimette. Ouimette played the role of Charlotte Von Malhsdorf, and a multitude of characters in her colourful life story.
While 'mining' Von Mahlsdorf's life, Ouimette like Doug Wright, discovered the unusual paradox in the history of this eccentric German "Tranny Granny", from her questionable political activities, to her vital role as a cultural trailblazer.
The most curious thing about Mahlsdorf besides her openly gay life style, was her gutsy plan to keep Berlin's Weimar Cabaret items safe - clocks, busts, lamps, vinyl, the liquor bottles - in the most unusual place.
Yes, at one time Charlotte had the only surviving Weimar Cabaret,The Gründerzeit Museum, in all of Eastern Germany actually hidden the basement of her house. Then after people had been sent away to concentration camps, and whole families wiped out, Charlotte would take her junk cart and carefully pick through their furniture. She polished and nurtured it.
Speaking of Cabaret ( the film Cabaret was based on the Weimar Cabaret -can you see Ouimette as the Emcee?)?
How about the Wife's intricate setting, do you have a gramophone with you on stage
There is, but it is a phonograph. There's a difference. The phonographs have the cylinders and the gramophones had the discs we know to be LPS or records. I have been learning the difference between the varieties. There are phonographs, gramophones, polyphones, pianolas, and it goes on and on. There were so many different styles and types and Charlotte had this huge collection of them. What a weird period of time to pick. Her specialty was what was called the Gründerzeit period, which was between 1890 and 1900, just a decade near the end of the 1800's or the turn of the century. It was not a particularly fantastic period of time, it was all factory made furniture, not handmade, and it was quite frew frewey with curly ques - lots of ornate designs and stuff. That was the period that she was most fond of.
One has to wonder what gave Charlotte Von Malhsdorf the extraordinary grit to be the person she was ?
There is an autobiography, and I have seen pics of her and it is quite a weird site. I don't know what gave her that grit for sure, but it might have had something to do with the kind of defining moment when the aunt ( Tante Louise - a militant lesbian) gives her the book by Magnus Hirschfeld about transvestites. The penny must have dropped big time because from that moment, Charlotte owned that. It wasn't like a thing she put on or an exterior, she owned that even though it is an outward costume but she owned it and that is probably the reason why she was allowed to walk around and people accepted her, because there is something about people who own their exterior - you don't mess with them somehow. It's a kind of supreme confidence. She was a cute child but not a very attractive older person. This is a plain, homely, man wearing a dress.
Charlotte certainly was a complicated creature. She saved her cultural heritage but by turning Stasi informant, made a choice to avoid arrest in both the Nazi and Communist regimes. Maybe the fact she turns from hero to outcast to icon inspires the true beauty, the humanness of the piece ?
She says it herself. The analogy about the furniture is absolutely correct. "A piece of furniture can have scraps and cuts and knicks and stains and all kinds of things on it, but that's proof that it was there. That's proof that it had history."
