SECOND STAGING FOR SOLO TOUR DE FORCE
Ripley learned about fear in `I Am My Own Wife'
He worried he couldn't play the many roles, but the play became a hit

JULIE YORK COPPENS
Theater Writer

Talk about being married to your material.

Most professional shows rehearse for about four weeks. Actor Scott Ripley has been living with Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf -- and the few dozen other characters he plays in "I Am My Own Wife," coming Tuesday to Booth Playhouse -- for at least two years.

The romance, though, began tentatively.

"I honestly did not pick up that script for four months. It sat in my bathroom for four months because I was too scared to start working on it," Ripley admits.

The actor finally engaged Doug Wright's 2004 Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama: a solo tour de force inspired by the true survival tale of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, the former East Germany's most celebrated transvestite and antiques collector.

Ripley made an obsessive study of the play. He mastered the accents. He handled the show's many props -- the vintage phonograph, the doll-sized bust of Wilhelm II, Charlotte's signature string of pearls -- until each became a beloved talisman.

Still, a few days before the production's initial run at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, in September 2006, Ripley doubted he could pull it off. He left rehearsal that night without a word to his director, Dennis Delamar, and drove home in a panic. The next morning, Ripley had an e-mail from Delamar, who was by then a trusted friend: "It said, `You have to think about Charlotte and what she went through.' That put it in perspective."

The show went on. And became a hit. Many months and several Metrolina Theatre Awards later, while Ripley and Delamar tackled other projects, officials at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center agreed to pick up "Wife" for a two-week remount uptown.

"Now, reliving it, it's like we know Charlotte," says Delamar, reflecting on what's been an emotional brush-up rehearsal period. And a happy one: "It's like she's a family member now."

Ripley and Delamar spoke with the Observer on April 24, Ripley's 46th birthday, after a rehearsal at Davidson College, where Ripley has taught in the theater department for the last three years. Soon he'll move to Chapel Hill to join the faculty of the Professional Actor Training program at UNC -- which means that for Charlotte audiences who've fallen in love with Ripley's technical virtuosity and damn-the-torpedoes performance style, this "Wife" reprise might be the end of the affair.

"This morning," the actor says, "Dennis stopped me at one point, when I was doing Charlotte, and he said, `Gosh, there's such a joy in her. Why is it so much greater than before?' It's because I'm not so afraid this time. There's still this danger, but there's not the fear of the unknown."

Adds Ripley, who suffered a broken betrothal shortly after "Wife's" first run, "I'm a different person than I was a year and a half ago. I'm really happy right now. I'm really in love with my life."

Naturally, he says, that love touches "Wife."

Ripley's marriage to Wright's play won't end with this month's revival: He'll perform the show June 15 at Festival Internazionale in Arezzo, Italy, where he also teaches. And he hopes to revisit the role further down the road, as other actors have done with Hamlet or Lear.

"You could do this play for 10 years and you'd never really perfect it," Ripley says. "Without doubt, it's been the turning point in my professional career. Just taking on something I was so sure I couldn't do. To have such a resonant, visceral connection to a role that is so different from me. Everything I teach in (acting) class is about what I had to do with this role."

"You're free now," Delamar tells Ripley, "to be afraid of nothing."

The director and actor are hopeful, though by no means assured, that area audiences will be intrigued to witness Ripley's ever-deepening relationship to "Wife," as it now stands.

"It's easily conceivable that this show would not be a hit in Charlotte. And that's OK," Ripley says. "Of course, I want people to see it. I want some of my more conservative students at Davidson to come see it. Maybe there will be a conversion or two. But that's not up to us.

"What we have to do," Ripley says, "is to bring these people back to life and be faithful to them." PREVIEW

I Am My Own Wife

Actor's Theatre brings its 2006 hit uptown, again with actor Scott Ripley in the acclaimed play's many roles.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and May 13-17; 3 p.m. next Sunday and May 18.

WHERE: Booth Playhouse, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, 130 N. Tryon St. ADMISSION:

$20-$34.50.