ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

Saturday, January 12

I arrived at the theater just as the production team has broken for lunch. Robert Pryor is off to the nearby sandwich shop and I sit with Gregg Daniel. We have known one another since the 1980's when we were represented by the same talent agency in New York City. It's been 5 years since Gregg was last here working with Theater 150, so we do some quick catching up before we begin our discussion. We sit on the floor of the set, the entrance and living room of a large mansion in East Berlin. It is furnished with antiques. I get a nice feeling of relief that T150 is finally in a place where they can have more room. My first question is about the production team.

Me: Let's start with the set. Who did the design:

Gregg: I have a wonderful designer team from Cal Arts Nadia Morgan. This is the third set she's designed for me and she also builds, too, which is good for doing theater on the cheap. The set represents the Gründerzeit Museum. Charlotte took over this mansion, basically squatting for 30 years. She won a medal for preserving pieces of furniture she rescued from the Nazis. The playwright, Doug Wright was a news corespondent for US News and World Report during the fall of the Berlin wall. He met Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and was immediately fascinated and over a period of 6 or 7 years he recorded interviews with her. The show was shopped at Sundance, La Jolla Playhouse. He struggled with how to dramatize the story of a hero who's a transvestite living and working as a woman and who could possibly have been a spy.

Me: How did this person come about.

Gregg: In the show she describes how as a little boy he put on the clothes of his lesbian aunt. She then gave him a book of a study by German sex researcher, Magnus Hirschfeld who refereed to homosexuals as a third sex. Luckily Hershfeld was on tour when the Nazis invaded. All his books were burned. Charlotte's aunt told him that the book would be his/her bible.

Me: What about this evidence of Charlotte being a spy. For the Stasi?

Gregg: They address that in the play. It is likely but during those times everyone was suspect. Everyone was spying on everyone else, so it's hard to pass judgment. But she continued to work collecting furniture and she created a gay cabaret in the museum when all the gay gathering places where shut down.

Me: Now you've finally come back to Ojai. Now the last time we spoke was I think three years ago and you told me then that you wanted to do this play. Why were you so compelled to do this play.

Gregg: I was really interested in the question of who controls history. History is a version of events that people agree upon. But how is it recorded, who tells it, who preserves it. Who keep a testament of time. History sublimated. For me, I think of the Black Power Movement and other Black history. I did not know many of the things that went on because the schools I went to weren't teaching these things, weren't telling these stories. I didn't know it was a legitimate story. So too with the gay movement. Who knew that a transvestite survived the Nazis and the Stasi – that's unheard of. And then, of course there's always good storytelling. The play was brilliant on Broadway. It demands your attention. Everyone is speaking German, the theatricality of it. You're being taken through history and you must give over to it. And it has the same themes of plays I've worked on here; Stop Kiss in 2004, Siswa Banzai is Dead, they all deal with sexual/racial issues. Society fails to have meaningful dialog and these issues call for theatricality. Hopefully I'll do a comedy next time.

As we talk Robert Pryor walks in brandishing a submarine sandwich from Jersey Mikes. He's dressed in his rehearsal skirt. He seems famished as he takes his first bite. He sits across from us and contemplates his answers as he chews.

Me: Tell me, what is your biggest challenge taking on this role?

Robert: It's an odd challenge. First of all I play a total of 35 characters, all switching accents and speaking most of it in German and hoping the audience is with you. It's a lot of fun. It's confusing learning dates. There are duel stories going on. First there's the playwright's story which goes from 1990 to 2002 and Charlotte's life that goes from the late 30's to the 40's and up to her death in 2002. It's a big story and we're telling it with four weeks of rehearsal. I've had lots of dialect coaching and that's been a great help.

The crew is returning from lunch and it's time for them to get back to rehearsal.

Gregg: Looks like it's time to get back to work.

Me: Thanks Gregg, thank you Robert. Break a leg.

With that I head out the dark theater and into the gorgeous Ojai afternoon.

I AM MY OWN WIFE performs this afternoon at 2pm.