hedwig

Hedwig was born in East Berlin as Hansel Schmidt, a son of a German woman and an American soldier. Her father abandoned his family and she was raised by an emotionally distant mother. She spent a lot of time listening to western music and her one dream was to escape to the West.

When Hedwig was 20, she met an American soldier called Luther Robinson. He convinced her to dress in drag and soon fell in love with her. Desperate to escape communist East Germany, and helped by her mother who gave her both her name and her passport, Hedwig decided to become a woman and marry Luther. However, her operation was botched and she was left without either a penis or a vagina, but with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh. She left for the US and lived with Luther in Junction City, Kansas for a year before he left her for a man.

After being abandoned by her husband, Hedwig started to perform as a drag queen and formed a rock band the Angry Inch. While working as a babysitter she befriended a brother a child she was babysitting, Tommy Speck. Tommy was a troubled teenager who has difficulty dealing with his Christian upbringing. Hedwig taught Tommy to write songs and soon they became a couple, with Hedwig deeply in love with Tommy. However, Tommy was disgusted by Hedwig's gender identity and left her, stealing her songs. He became a rock star using the songs, and Hedwig's band had to resort to playing small venues to survive.

Hedwig follows Tommy around the US as he tours the country. Over the course of her show she tells her story and learns to accept herself.