Hedwig and the angry inch channel the ghost of glam rock

Platform shoes, feather boas, exotic hairstyles and kilos of glitter … What do you get when you mix these ingredients, with good music and spice everything up with a spoonful of sexual ambiguity? Glam rock was a genre in which over the top stars like Marc Bolan, David Bowie-Ziggy Stardust and David Johansen triumphed. But if we could choose from among the glam of imaginary characters created by film and theatre, Hedwig, star of the cult film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” would certainly be elected to the pantheon of Glam…

The Hedwig phenomenon was born in 1998 as an off-Broadway musical, written by John Cameron Mitchell with music by Stephen Trask. The musical tells the story of Hedwig, a transsexual singer and the leader of glam-rock group called “The Angry Inch.” Hedwig monologues and songs explain his childhood as Hansel in East Berlin, a few years before the Wall fell, his youth in the U.S. after a disastrous sex change operation and a frustrated marriage, and his adulthood as a singer who relentlessly pursues Tommy Gnosis, a hugely successful rocker who may have stolen her songs …

In 2001, the musical became a film, with the help of the John Cameron Mitchell, and shortly after its release it went on to win multiple awards, including the International Film Festival in Berlin and the Audience Award at Sundance. And, more importantly, it found favour among a large group of fans worldwide, who began to hold parties during which they masquerade as their favourite characters and sing along to the most popular songs (“The origin of love”, “Tear me down “…).

In Europe, the major tribute parties to Hedwig can be found in Barcelona, Paris and, of course, Berlin … It was precisely in Berlin, where one of the last international meet-ups of “Hedwig in a box”, the official fan club of the film occurred, and it is also the city where the film is most often projected in cinemas. Stay tuned for more info on these parties, but in the meantime I suggest you rent apartments in Berlin and follow Hedwig’s footsteps through the streets of her hometown…