Eaton and Tulip: They are their own theater dynasty

ANN ARBOR – People are starting to talk.
No, not about how many times director Gillian Eaton and actor Malcolm Tulip have worked together over the years. (Okay, yes they are, but that's only the secondary topic of conversation. And the answer is "four," beginning with "Elizabeth Rex" in 2002 and ending with "Mrs. Shakespeare Dishes the Dirt" this past January.)
Rather, it's the opening July 28 of their latest collaboration at Ann Arbor's Performance Network Theatre – the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama, "I Am My Own Wife" – that has theatergoers drooling with excitement. For not only is it the Michigan professional premiere of the much anticipated gender-bending production, it could also be the crowning achievement in the already incredible careers of the British duo.
"I've done pieces where I've [played] multiple characters, but a play like this with one performer and so many different characters – and the nature and the construction of it – that's a challenge," Tulip recently told BTL while relaxing before a rehearsal. "And it's the challenge for the actor that drew me to it, as much as the content of the play."
Ironically enough, it's both the drama's acting demands and its controversial, true-life story that likely scare most theaters from staging the powerful script.
"It's the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, an East Berlin transvestite and avid furniture collector who survived the Nazis and the Stasis," Eaton revealed. "But it's also a story of a gay New York writer looking for an unusual character to write about."
In fact, the script's author, Doug Wright, is one of the two major characters in the story. "For me, I can't take them apart, because the needs of the writer, the producer and the director to create this piece are as important as the story of Charlotte," Eaton said.
That von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002) survived Nazi and communist rule as a homosexual and transvestite is nothing short of amazing. But doubts cast upon certain aspects of her story – as well as a Stasi file that suggests she was a government informant – only humanize the character, Eaton and Tulip believe. "How can you judge her?" Eaton asks. "How can anyone not having gone through that judge another person? The ambiguity is there in a very real way. We just don't know if she's a hero or not."
"It's not so black and white," Tulip added.
The challenge for Tulip, an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan, isn't just creating 35 characters of varying ages, genders, nationalities and dialects during the course of the two-hour play. Rather, it's making each of them totally distinct. "Some of them are brief flashes. There's a scene with seven reporters, and each has a little bit. And there are scenes with conversations between two or three people. A lot of the work has been finding the quick shifts," Tulip said.
There's also lot of technical work in the piece, the actor said. "What I'm realizing the further we go into it is that there's a higher level of theatricality involved. That's part of the joy of the piece, I think."
What the show lacks are costume changes. "All of the parts are played in the base costume – a peasant dress, a blouse, a scarf, the pearls. All the men wear the pearls and sensible black shoes. So I guess all the characters are transvestites," the actor laughed.