Charlotte light and dark: the indomitable German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf comes to life in a new play by Doug Wright. (theater).

Playwright Doug Wright relates to stories of rule breakers: Witness Quills, his drama about free speech, obscenity, and the Marquis de Sade. Director Moises Kaufman's protagonists break the rules in a gay way, as evidenced in The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency.

These two out artists are pooling their talents on I Am My Own Wife, beginning this month at New York City's Playwrights Horizons theater. Starring actor Jefferson Mays in the title role--and playing 40 other characters as well--Wife views the 20th century through the eyes of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an East Berlin transvestite who survived both the Nazis and the communists.

Mahlsdorfs memoir, I Am My Own Woman, already inspired an eponymous film by German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim. But Wright's play is more subjective, recounting his decade-long friendship with Mahlsdoff, who died in 2002. The Advocate spoke with Wright about this labor of love.

How did you first become aware of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf?

I was traveling through Berlin. A friend, who happened to be the U.S. News and World Report bureau chief, said, "The wall has fallen, and the most astonishing characters have come to light, people the world didn't even know existed. And have I got one for you." We drove out to Charlotte's house at 10 P.M. and sat up talking until 2 A.M. I left convinced that I had to write a play about her life.

Why? What intrigued you?

Charlotte was born in 1928 as Lothar Berfelde. From an early age, Lothar knew he was gay and had an interest in cross-dressing. And because he had a tolerant and indulgent lesbian aunt who decided to encourage those urges, not suppress them, he started to cross-dress as a child and subsequently lived his life as an openly gay cross-dressing male under both the Nazis and the communists, two of the most repressive regimes that Western culture has ever produced.

Did he survive because he passed as a woman?

In his youth, I think he was a convincing woman. But he restored furniture--that was his profession. So he had the burly, gnarled hands of a woodworker, but he'd wear a little black house dress and a string of pearls. He identified as a transvestite. His aunt had introduced him to [sexologist] Magnus Hirschfeld, who felt that in terms of gender, there was male and female and a third sex that embraced anyone who had elements of both. Charlotte would always say that he was, or she was, "the third sex."

How did you begin to adapt her story into dramatic form?

I went back and forth to Berlin for about two years and amassed 500 pages of transcripts. I'd write these Masterpiece Theater scenes taken from her life. They were never as good as her stories told in her own eccentric, broken English. So I started to rely on transcripts and letters we exchanged. I also got information from her secret police file. Luckily, I was working with Moises, who has a rich history of creating collage theater from other texts. I do take dramatic license; the play is a subjective portrait of a person whom I fell in love with. But it's very true to the spirit of her life.

Charlotte passed away in April 2002. She knew my intention was to write a play about her life. Sometimes I would caution her: "I am going to take all the raw clay of your life and fashion it into a vase. That means I'm going to have to cut a lot away." And she would say, "Yes, that's necessary in art."

Che is a contributing editor for Time Out New York