My last big role was Antonio in The Merchant of Venice. Burkhard Schmiester and I had developed an interpretation that matched me to the role. I was already over eighty. Stefan Aretz, who was playing Bassanio, was not yet thirty. We asked ourselves why the unmarried Antonio might have acted as guarantor for Bassanio's loan without any security or preconditions. Schmiester set the production in the present and I gave it a homoerotic touch. Antonio was in love with Bassanio and Bassanio was exploiting that shamelessly in his own interest. Antonio is an outsider in Bassanio's circle, just as Shylock is an outsider in Venetian society. They should actually have been allies, but instead they are locked in a bitter conflict. Antonio is seeking recognition and respect from others, just like his antagonist Shylock – although in Shylock's case that respect is denied him a priori. Our interpretation was convincing; the audience accepted this Merchant.

Another high point in my late theatrical career was a role in the play I Have a Dream, by Gerold Theobalt. The play can only be produced with black actors. The Kempt-Tournee-Theater from Grünwald near Munich took up the challenge. Margrit Kempt cast the brilliant and versatile Ron Williams for the role of Martin Luther King Jr, and the famous opera singer Felicia Weathers, who was at home in all the great theaters of the world, as his mother, Bunch King. I played his father, Martin Luther King Sr, known as Daddy King. Helmuth Fuschl directed.

The play was a total success. We performed some 300 times on stages in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and also in Luxemburg and South Tyrol in German-speaking Italy. Not all the actors were able to appear in all the performances, because they had other engagements. Two white actors, Matthias Heidepriem and Jörg Reimers, and we three Blacks formed the hard core and the basis for the show's continuing success. The performances were usually sold out, and young people often sat in the aisles because no seats were available – much to the dismay of the fire department. As a rule the performance ended with a standing ovation.