ARTS FEATURE
SALVAGING HEDWIG
An incessant conversation about the ‘Angry Inch’ BY NIKOLAI MATHER
On Dec. 31, the Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte (ATC) will ring in the new year with a return to Hadley Theatre, which has served as its home on the Queens University campus since 2017, but was forced to shut down as the pandemic clamped in March 2020. After months of shutdowns and creative outdoor productions, ATC will presenting its first indoor show since COVID-19 hit: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, starring local actor and comedian Ryan Stamey as Hedwig. The production will kickoff with a New Year’s Eve party on Dec. 31 followed by a Jan. 5-22 run. Launched off Broadway in 1998, Hedwig follows the titular character as she chases love and superstardom in the United States. But COVID-19 isn’t the only issue the company must adapt to for this production. More than two decades after the musical’s premiere, ATC must now reckon with the production’s more problematic aspects. Hedwig has long faced scrutiny for its depiction of transition and gender identity, but the questions have grown more urgent in this time, as trans rights and issues have become more openly discussed; and in this place, as North Carolina has infamously been home to HB2 and now Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who regularly spouts hate speech about the LGBTQ community from whatever pulpit he can find. I recently sat down with Stamey and executive director Chip Decker to discuss Hedwig and ATC’s approach to this latest production.
Pg. 6 DEC 29 - JAN 11, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM
An introduction to the ‘Angry Inch’
Stamey didn’t get acquainted with Hedwig and the Angry Inch until college, but once he did, he knew that he had found his “dream role,” he explained. “It was around the time that I was coming out [as gay] to my friends and my family,” he told me. “[Hedwig] was just a taste of this alternative, queer culture. I was totally enamored with … the ‘genderfuck’ aspect of the whole production.” It’s easy to understand why Hedwig and the Angry Inch is so beloved. The musical’s star is Hedwig, an East German-born punk rocker. Against
As for his view of the show’s overall message, a backdrop of 1970s glam rock and the Cold War, Hedwig tells her life story, including how she came ATC’s Decker told me, “This is a show about a to have the “angry inch” – the genitalia she was left transgendered [sic] individual whose transition with after being coerced into a back-alley bottom goes horribly wrong.” Other people have other ideas about who Hedwig surgery. There are endless obstacles, many of which hinge is. What’s more, the people adapting Mitchell’s musical on her status as a gender outcast. Nevertheless, she — cast, crew and executives — are by and large is brilliant, bold and unabashedly queer to the very cisgender. And for the better part of the past two decades, the safety and dignity of transfeminine people end. As trans media representation has scaled up into has not figured as a major concern in the industry. the topic du jour, a lot of former fans have adopted a more critical view of the musical’s issues; and there are several. For one, Hedwig’s story is fraught with transphobic tropes. She begins as a “little slip of a girlyboy” who is then coerced into a sex change by her fiance and mother. When she lands in the United States, she ends up in the tabloids for — among other things — pursuing an intimate relationship with a teenager. These plot points play into two contrived talking points about trans people: that young people are forced HEDWIG IN A PAST PRODUCTION FROM ACTOR’S THEATRE OF CHARLOTTE. into transitions and PHOTO COURTESY OF ATC that trans women Over the years, what limited nuance there are sexual predators. For what it’s worth, playwright and creator was for Hedwig has all but faded into a morass of John Cameron Mitchell has gone to great lengths transmisogyny. At a certain point, you come to and to distance Hedwig from transness. In a 2019 you realize you are watching a man in a wig chasing interview with Advocate.com, he said Hedwig is not a 17-year-old boy. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so transgender because she was “mutilated and forced genderfuck anymore. Throughout our interview, Stamey into a gender assignment against her will.” Mitchell has stated many times over the show’s acknowledged the stickier parts of the source history that the theme is less about gender identity material, but seemed optimistic about the company’s ability to make it more inclusive. and more about finding oneself. “I hope people come to the show with an I don’t doubt his authorial intent, but the runaway success of Hedwig means that he no longer open mind and an open heart,” he said. “If they has complete creative control over the characters. have questions, I hope they’re not afraid to ask
them. That’s how dialogues begin, that’s how conversations begin … and if anything comes out of the show, that is what I hope for.”
Conversation, not controversy
Part of ATC’s mission is to connect with the audience beyond the traditional bounds of the stage. One way it does this is through what it calls “talkbacks,” in which the team follows up on a show by hosting a panel discussion featuring experts, activists and other important figures involved in themes that run through a given production. Through this practice, which ATC began in 2005, Decker believes audience members are able to come to a better appreciation of the productions. “This is an opportunity and a safe space to have these conversations that lead to a better understanding of ourselves,” he said. This will be the first time the company has done a talkback for Hedwig. Typically, the practice isn’t done with musicals, but in light of the musical’s issues, ATC felt it was appropriate. Hedwig talkbacks will include staff and volunteers with Time Out Youth and Transparent, two organizations in Charlotte supporting young trans people and their families. The hope is that extending the discussion beyond the script will push people to learn more about gender. “[These talkbacks are] basically geared toward starting conversations about things that people just don’t feel comfortable talking about,” Decker says. For the first read-through of the script, Decker invited a transgender person to speak about their experiences and answer questions the cast had. There are no transgender members of the production team — only cisgender and gendernonforming, according to Decker – but he does think the outreach efforts will make for a better experience. “One of the things I tell my staff a lot is, ‘There’s no good in doing controversial theatre. We do conversational theatre,’” he said. “Controversy shuts people down, conversation lets people have a safe space to talk.” Crucially, ATC decided to stick with one particularly controversial aspect of the play: the casting of Hedwig as a cis man. This choice conflicts with contemporary modes of trans representation in pop culture; the practice of casting cis actors in trans roles has become taboo in Hollywood and elsewhere. In 2020, the casting of a cisgender actor in a trans
