Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and a book by John Cameron Mitchell. The musical follows Hedwig Robinson, the genderqueer East German singer of a fictional rock and roll band. The story draws on Mitchell's life as the child of a U.S. Army major general who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was Mitchell's family babysitter and moonlighted as a sex worker at her trailer park home in Junction City, Kansas. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock style of David Bowie (who co-produced the Los Angeles production of the show), as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk performers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
Adaptations (1)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch was adapted into a 2001 film.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch2001 · film · 95 min · dir. John Cameron Mitchell · IMDb ↗Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an 'internationally ignored' but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a 'beautiful gender of one'.
