Saturday, November 12, 2011, 8pm
Jungle Theater – I Am My Own Wife
8pm: Performance
about 10pm – Talkback and backstage tour
about 11pm – Social Event: moto-i, across the street. Food will be provided.
Performance Information:
from http://www.jungletheater.com/season2011/myownwife.html
I Am My Own Wife, By Doug Wright, Directed by Joel Sass, Starring Bradley Greenwald
“One of the bravest and most courageous new plays in over a decade.” – NY Times
“Museum. Furniture. Men. This is the order in which I have lived my life.” – Charlotte
The Jungle reunites actor Bradley Greenwald and director Joel Sass to tell the astounding true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Collector of antiques, non-conformist, and guardian of the past, Charlotte survived the Nazi terror and the communist oppression of East Germany. What makes her story so extraordinary is that Charlotte von Mahlsdorf was a man, and lived her defiant, distinctive life adamantly on her own terms. One of the most popular shows the Jungle has produced, and winner of a 2006 IVEY Award for Performance. Not to be missed!
Q&A with Bradley Greenwald
As Bradley Greenwald returns to I Am My Own Wife, we sit down with him to talk about reuniting with the show, his season with the Jungle and what’s coming up for him.
It’s been five years since you first performed I Am My Own Wife. What is running around new in your head about the show?
We originally approached the play as a long piece of storytelling and, in a way, tackled it as if it were more about the playwright, Doug Wright, than Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The tension of the play lies in how the playwright comes to terms with an amazing human story of survival that gets tarnished by the unmythologized details of day-to-day existence–adoration compromised by reality. We deal with that all the time, and not just with our historical figures like Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King, Jr., but with those within the circle of our lives. When we want to celebrate people, or even love them, what do we do when we learn too much about them? What do we edit and what do we preserve? We did a good job of illuminating that back in 2006 but Charlotte, of course, overwhelms the story with her very existence. So this time around I think we’ll be keeping an eye on the playwright’s struggle with her and add some more of that seasoning to the stew. And Wright’s solution at the end, culled from Charlotte’s wisdom, is very wise.
What stands out for you from the first performance?
When I started revisiting the text (all of it had left my head since we did it five years ago), certain characters jumped out at me who made me laugh again: Charlotte’s friend Alfred Kirschner, the bartender Minna Mahlich, the TV host Ziggy Fluss, and of course, Charlotte herself. Her voice and mannerisms actually slipped on like a pair of comfortable, old (orthopedic) shoes, and I was surprised at how much of the character remained hidden away in some closet of my mind, waiting to be needed again.
You have leapt from Forum” to “Hamlet” and now I Am My Own Wife in one season at the Jungle! Describe what that feels like.
Well, three different kinds of shows could not be more possible! FORUM was a stylistic romp, and Myles Gloriosus was a commedia character of the broadest strokes. Claudius in Hamlet was my first Shakespeare role and daunting as it was, I have to say, the work load never overwhelmed the desire to climb that hill every evening–the learning curve was steep, unending and I felt like I had achieved something by the end of every performance. Now it’s on to an old friend or, rather, 34 old friends, and I’m excited. And, of course, my gratitude to the Jungle is enormous. The gift they have given me is unusual and extremely generous. I’ve set up a cot, a toothbrush, a change of underwear and a bottle of Scotch in the basement these past six months. I’ll be sad to move out.
Talk about how you work with director Joel Sass in this kind of one-on-one rehearsal.
Joel, like Bain, thinks poetically, and he can build extemporaneously from an improvised idea. I tend to close my eyes and jump. So basically neither of us starts out with a plan, but the plan reveals itself the longer and deeper we get into the project. We just take one moment at a time. It is not the kind of play where the director can say “move over there on this line and make a gesture on this word.” Joel has an idea and I build on it; or I do something and Joel shapes it; or I do something and I hate it, so Joel suggests something brilliant; or Joel and I come up with variations and we just make a mega-hybrid of it all.
What else is on your horizon?
After I Am My Own Wife, I’ll start rehearsing Shakespeare’s As You Like It with 10,000 Things Theater (carrying with me all I learned from Bain during Hamlet). Then I’ll put my foot in the music world for a few months, singing with Kevin Kling for a Valentine’s Day project, a Schumann song cycle with Hill House Chamber players, The St. John Passion with Bach Society of Minnesota, and Carmina Burana with Minnesota Dance Theatre. Then after spring I start drumming up more work. The life of a free-lancer is never comfortable for very long.
Biographies
BRADLEY GREENWALD is well-known to Jungle audiences from his acclaimed performances in Torch Song Trilogy and the Ivey Award-winning I Am My Own Wife. Bradley also spent many years performing with Theatre de la Jeune Lune in opera and music theater works such as Don Juan Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and Mefistofele among others. A familiar face on the stages of the Guthrie and Children’s Theater, he has also appeared regionally at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, American Repertory Theater and others.
JOEL SASS is a Minneapolis-based designer and adapter, specializing in new work for the stage and imaginative treatments of classic plays. At the Jungle Theater, his directing credits include: The Mystery of Irma Vep; Blithe Spirit; The Seafarer, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment; Hitchcock Blonde; The Syringa Tree; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Shining City and I Am My Own Wife. In 2007, Joel received the Alan Schneider Director Award from Theater Communications Group, a national honor identifying an outstanding freelance director. He has also been awarded a 2006 McKnight Theater Artist Fellowship for directing, and a 2006 IVEY award for scenic design for his set for The Last of the Boys and most recently was honored with an IVEY award for his 2009 production of Mary’s Wedding.
