Hedwig, the most famous “internationally ignored”
transsexual, is coming to Halifax.
Actor, writer and director John Cameron Mitchell gave birth to
Hedwig in New York’s famous drag club Squeezebox; since then she’s had
her own cult musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and a namesake
movie that was the sleeper hit of 2001 (nominated for a Golden Globe
but not an Oscar—surprise, surprise).
The phenomenon is often compared to The Rocky Horror Picture
Show, but “Hedheads” follow a cult of personality, so comparisons
don’t stand.
“You say you saw ‘her’ in a movie, whereas with Rocky Horror
Picture Show you say ‘I saw the movie version,'” says Ian Mullan,
who plays Hedwig in TRRRASH’s July 24th production of the musical at
The Paragon Theatre. “The way that Hedwig entrenches herself into
legendary rock status! In her last song she sings: ‘Here’s to Patti,
here’s to Tina, here’s to Yoko—and here’s to me.'”
It’s surprising that with all its subversive cues, Rocky
Horror is as mainstream a phenomena as it is (I wonder the same
thing every time Freddie Mercury blares anthemically at a sporting
event). Could Hedwig speak to Joe Middle-America Blow?
Mullan pauses for thought. “I don’t know. I think that it’s always
weird to detect what other people are going to be interested in,” he
says. “It’s like putting people into boxes again. You view people
through specific lenses, and this show is about stopping that.”
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the story of a self-confessed
“girly-boy” who starts life as Hansel Schmidt in East Berlin, takes an
American GI lover, and, in order to join him in the US, undergoes a
sex-change that is botched and results in a few inches of unformed
flesh—neither nugget nor molten clam, just an “angry inch.”
So begins an exploration of gender identity and a musical journey
toward a peculiar heart of darkness—no Colonel Kurtz here, but a
fresh-faced boy-next trailer-door, Tommy Gnosis, whom Hedwig loves,
tutors in the ways of rock ‘n’ roll, then chases through America after
he steals her songs and finds stardom with them.
The musical follows Hedwig and her band, The Angry Inch, as they
tail Gnosis on his tour, performing like Tina to the masses in local
restaurants and group homes, down the street from where her ex sings to
sold-out stadiums.
Mullan was “blown away” by the movie when he first saw it as a
teenager in small-town Ontario. “There’s a message of love and truth
and this quest for love, wholeness. It’s a sadder story, but a really
positive story about being who you are—be there, really put yourself
out there.”
It’s the first production by Halifax-based TRRRASH, a theatre
company Mullan formed last summer.
“In coming up with the name TRRRASH, I was thinking, you know,
there’s so much garbage in the world and there’s so much stuff that you
have to deal with every day,” he says. “People have to take on jobs
that they don’t necessarily want, or they’re put in circumstances that
they never dreamed for themselves as kids, but somehow people survive,
somehow you make do with the little joys that come into your life. I
think that that’s what Hedwig’s story is, and that’s a really important
story to tell.”
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2009.