I Am My Own Wife

I Am My Own Wife

“I am my own wife” is a play that revolves around a true story of a German guy “Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf” who survived the 20th century regimes. “Doug Wright” who was an American dramatist and the author of QUILLS play, wrote the play after having interviewed Charlotte for hundreds of hours in 1990’s. During its production, Doug Wright made this play a “one-woman show performed by a man”. Moises Kaufman directed the using Tectonics’ collaborative methods, and work- shopped at a Theater Lab then moved the play to Playwrights Horizons and later moved to Broadway (Wright 1-15).

Stephen Ouimette played almost forty different characters in the show. The actor was able to change from one character to the other throughout the show. Well written scripts enabled the actor to adopt the characters. However, the flow of the story dictated where the actor would go next in terms of switching from one characters to the other. Stephen qualified to be the perfect actor through the play because he was able to adopt the personality of all the forty characters in the play.

In conclusion, in his chameleon-like ability to change his characters, Stephen merged and played the role of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf and nearly all the other forty characters, including the SS and Stasi officers and American soldiers. This multi-character or one-man show aspect of the play enabled the show to be the best ever performed single actor show in America and, “therefore” the show won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.