He/She & Me: A Love Story
Academy Theatre, Avondale Estates, Georgia
http://www.academytheatre.org/
Saturday, September 5, 2009: Visiting the Atlanta, Georgia area, with a friend, I've taken some time out to see a theatre production here, a one person show performed by Sharon Mathis, a psychologist and actor, and directed by Robert Drake. Whatever skepticism I had about just how effective a 40-minute long show could be was dispelled by this production. For I thought the performer did justice to selecting and distilling the most essential bits of dialogue and re-enactment of scenes that ensue from the seemingly stable life of a woman, Pat, in her fifties whose husband, Sam, decides to transition into a woman and become Sheila. Sam-Sheila never appears on stage; only a symbol of him, a bright red shirt that Pat clutches, wears, and tosses aside. The play is about the universal theme of coping with loss, in this instance of an intimate, life partner, a spouse. The form of the loss is unusual--the spouse suddenly changes into a different person--name, gender, physical body.
After the performance, there was an informative discussion, which was about as long as the performance. We learned that the performer, Sharon Mathis, wrote the dialogue and selected scenes to re-enact from her own experiences as a psychologist, who counsels transgender clients and their wives. She also drew on a book written by Virginia Erhardt, Head over Heels: Wives who stay with Crossdressers and Transsexuals (2006). This book presents interviews the author had with women who stayed in relationships with their husbands.
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