''Have we really come very far in terms of acceptance?''
Actor Michael Stebbins says that's a question provoked by the play I Am My Own Wife, whose central character is Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. This real-life German transvestite somehow managed to escape notice and persecution by the Nazis as a boy dressed in girl's clothes. Nearly a half-century after Germany's darkest chapter, von Mahlsdorf warned her compatriots that she saw renewed flickers of intolerance.
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Michael Stebbins in ''I Am My Own Wife''
(Photo by Stan Barouh)
''Charlotte in the play is interviewed on a German television show in the early '90s and says that anti-Semitism has come back and so has homophobia,'' explains Stebbins, who plays von Mahlsdorf -- and the play's dozens of minor characters to boot -- in the production of Doug Wright's play now at Columbia's Rep Stage. Rep Stage is actually the fourth theater company in the D.C.-Baltimore region in only the past seven years to stage the show, which also scooped up every major American theater award a decade ago, including the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. Stebbins thinks the play's success and perennial popularity comes from its focus on the ever-morphing but also ever-relevant ''idea of acceptance, whether it be color of skin, religion, preferences of any kind. We're still talking about stuff that's very current.''
Of course its construction as a one-man show adds appeal to both actors seeking a showcase for their range and theater companies seeking a savings from standard show costs. ''For one union actor, you get 25 characters,'' Stebbins says, laughing, ''I'm a real deal!''
I Am My Own Wife actually comes at the start of a new chapter for Stebbins, who last May stepped down as Rep Stage's producing artistic director after nearly eight years. Stebbins is now working fulltime as a freelance stage actor and director, with projects brewing in New York as well as his hometown of Milwaukee.
But don't worry, he won't be a stranger in these parts for long: Stebbins will return to Rep Stage in the spring for a role in the musical The Fantasticks. – Doug Rule
I Am My Own Wife runs to this Sunday, Nov. 17, at The Horowitz Center's Studio Theatre at Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Md. Tickets are $33 to $40. Call 443-518-1500 or visit repstage.org.
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