Act I

Watching Charlotte Reissers plays had a different effect on the women in the audience than on the men, a different effect on the Nazis than the Jews.

The show Wolfram Schneider had dragged his close comrades and too brought revelations to several different people. For Marlene, it was the first show she didn't get bored halfway through; it had a spark of feminism hidden between the lines. Some of the women in the audience noticed it more than others, but every woman could relate to the lead-the photographer from Wien. 

Martin resonated with the Englishman, the laughingstock of the show because he knew what it felt like not to understand anything of what was happening around him. He realized, with shocking clarity, that Reisser had seen through the fallacy quickly, and had Martin not been such a fool, he would have admitted to himself that he was a terrible actor and could have prevented Reisser from being sent to his death. Oh had he not been such a fool! It almost hurt to watch the Englishman, especially since the actor pulled the part off perfectly.

To Wolfram Schneider, it was a hilarious play about a woman following and documenting things that her husband did, and it gave him a boost of self-confidence; he was going to be documented and awarded for the things he did.

There was not a single Jew in the audience to get the references that only a Jewish person would catch. 

The curtain lifts. A young handsome woman stands in the middle of the stage, a briefcase in one hand, and a camera in the other. 

"Klaus?"

"Yes, my darling?" 

"The driver is already here. He's waiting!"

"I know, I'll be there shortly." The voice comes from the left of the stage. 

"You don't have to be late for your conference, dear."

"Yes, my darling. Don't worry." His voice comes from the right side of the stage this time, and the actress playing Constanze turns her head confusedly. 

"What are you up to, and how did you?"

"Stop harassing me," his voice comes from a different direction yet again, this time from directly behind her. She whirls around to face away from the audience and toward the wall. A door opens on the back canvas, and a man in a suit and tie steps out. He is the definition of sharp and crisp. "Thank you for the briefcase, Constanze. Have fun with the photography."

"It's an Art." She says with a pleased smile.

"It could be art - if a talented man were to take that camera into his hands."

"How dare you!"

"I'll be back in a month. Goodbye!" He waves her and her remark off and leaves the stage. Constanze stays behind with the camera. The audience rumbled with laughter, though it mostly came from the men. 

"I'm an outstanding photographer." She states to herself, "If I can't be important, I can take pictures of those who are and, in doing so - make them far more important. What is a man without his photo? Why he is like a man without a suit and tie!" The audience laughed; most of the people chuckling were bisexual men or wives whose husbands fretted about their image. "I'll show Klaus! When he returns he'll want me to take his photo as well!" She nods her head in determination and the scene went black. The audience clapped. Wolfram Schneider leaned over to Martin. 

"Did you know," he whispered, that Charlotte had two other men train to sound exactly like the actor who plays Klaus—his name is Joseph Falke, by the way, a wonderful man—so that they could make his voice come from different directions so smoothly? Charlotte hated any kind of playback audio. I find it impressive." Martin just nodded. The stage lights had gone on again, and he didn't want to be the "idiot" who talked through the play.

In the next cut, Constanze speaks to friends about her idea of traveling to Berlin to become a photographer. The friends tell her off, telling her that Berlin is a place for important people—or very poor people who would snatch her off the streets. It is a comic scene that rouses lots of laughter. 

The next scene showed Constanze practicing with inanimate objects. Later, she moved to arrange her husband's clothes into poses, which she then shot pictures of. "I quite like this one," she would remark occasionally, or "Oh no, not at all flattering, save this for the men you don't like," and the audience rumbled with laughter. 

Toward the end of the scene, she laughs and faces the audience. Very lightheartedly, Constanze says, "Oh, but wouldn't the scene be so much more beautiful if it were women's dresses instead of these boring suits!" Marlene sat up straighter as she heard it. The world might look quite a bit different if there were not only pants but also dresses and skirts among the important people. She smiled to herself; too bad Charlotte wasn't here; she'd have loved to talk to her about what exactly she'd had in mind after writing that line.

The first act ended, and the hall interrupted into applause. 

The spotlight switches on. A group of young men are around a table drinking. "I'm so sick of England!" The one in the middle calls out in English. "All this land but no place for me to build a house in Carrieham, not with the prices anyway."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Marry into the royal family?" One of them proposes.

"Nothing, not in England anyway. I'm going to go to Germany!"

"To live there?" He spits out his beer. "In Germany? With the Krauts?"

"Yes! I learned some German at university, I'll be just fine. I already booked the boat." His friends erupt into arguments about how crazy and absurd it is, the table and their chairs roll to the side, the actors perfectly shuffling their feet so they smoothly glide off of center stage and to the right. 

Constanze appears on the other side. "I'm going to Berlin."

"But Wien has important people too-."

"I know Mama, but Berlin...Berlin is the place to be today. So that's where I'll go. I yearn to see the Reichstagsgebäude! And all the plazas!" 

The Englishmen leave, and the mother leaves. 

Only the two characters are left on stage: Constanze in one spotlight and Eric, the Englishman, in another. 

"Oh how I'll love Berlin!"

"Oh, how I'll love Germany! I heard they have the best women. The ones here don't like me very much." The audience laughed. "To Germany!" He raises his beer, takes a long swig, and then runs off the stage with a naive and boyish gait. 

"To Berlin!" Constanze cries with determination.

Curtain falls.