It's been almost a year and a half since I was introduced to the musical that changed my life. A wonderful dance teacher played her favorite song from it and I fell in love. Hedwig and the Angry Inch was not well known yet, so as I watched the movie and listened to the rest of the soundtrack, I had no idea what to expect.
But in the time since I started listening to Hedwig, I feel like I've grown up so much and found ways of coping with life that I would never have developed had it not been for this beautiful piece of art.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is performed like a concert, the story told by Hedwig herself through monologue form, interspersed with music. It tells the story of a "slip of a girly boy" from Communist East Berlin who has loved punk rock and philosophy since she was young. Born a boy (named Hansel), Hedwig falls in love with an American G.I. and undergoes a sex change operation in order to marry him and flee to the West. She takes her mother's name and passport. Unfortunately, nothing works out as it was supposed to: the operation was botched, leaving Hedwig neither man nor woman, and her husband leaves on their first anniversary.
Soon after, the Berlin Wall falls, proving Hedwig's sacrifice for freedom to be pointless. Hedwig, who has been searching all of her life for her "other half," falls in love with a young boy named Tommy Speck. Under her guidance, Tommy blossoms into a confident, talented young musician. They write music together, and Hedwig renames him Tommy Gnosis (the Greek word for knowledge) in tribute to his religious background.
Hedwig believes Tommy is her prophesied other half- the one her soul was separated from according to Aristophanes' speech about the origin of love in Plato's Symposium. But as Tommy's fame skyrockets, he leaves Hedwig and takes the music she had written, calling it his own. Bitter and lonely, Hedwig starts her own band and travels around the country, following Tommy's tour. She tells her story and eventually (after a seriously theatrical mental breakdown) realizes that perhaps she doesn't need to find her other half at all: "there's no mystical design, no cosmic lover preassigned," and begins to understand that her other half has been a part of herself all along.
In the final song of the show, Hedwig has found peace with herself and urges her audience to do the same, singing that we are all "transmissions on the midnight radio," like the songs she listened to as a young child in Berlin. She sings to "the misfits and the losers" reminding us all that we need nothing but ourselves.
Needless to say, this musical is a combination of inappropriate humor, brilliant music, an incredible character arc, and enough inspiration to last a lifetime.
Yes, it's risque and raunchy, but there is so much more to it than a punk rocker jumping around in women's clothes, singing about her botched sex change operation- it's a love story. One less about chemical romance and more focused on the realization that simply existing as one's own individual is the best reality. We can be complete without anyone else or their approval.
Hedwig is about throwing caution to the wind and accepting change as it comes, realizing that "Who I Am" is not a fixed point: we are all evolving people, constantly bent and nourished by the world around us. Hedwig taught me versatility, flexibility, and the brutal honesty needed to successfully grow into the people we are meant to be. She challenged this belief our society seems to hold, the idea that we have to know exactly who we are.
There is so much pressure to know "who you are" and where you are going. Life can seem like a constant struggle to find the balance between staying true to your identity and allowing yourself to be shifted by your environment, circumstances, and the people around you. The thing most people don't realize is that it's okay not to know who you are yet, as long as you are able to claim independence from the things you don't believe in.
There is a song called Wig in a Box, which basically says that all you have to do in times of stress is turn up the music, pull yourself together, and carry on. Because in the end, holding on to pain only makes everything else uglier.
Lately, I've been needing a lot of Hedwig, and I am so thankful to have the inspiration that she provides. School is stressful, friendships are difficult, and maintaining a positive outlook might be the biggest struggle of all. But whenever I feel down, the lessons from this show find their way back to me somehow.
Listening to that final song, Midnight Radio, reminds me that no one can determine who I am or how I feel. And more importantly, it reminds me that everyone feels like a misfit or a loser sometimes, and that's okay. I think we're all a little confused or broken inside, but that's beautiful because love helps mend the broken pieces. Sometimes we just don't realize that the love we need to mend ourselves has been within us all along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxqGzVHcfmk
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