Gender Bender

Former Michigander Miriam Shor explores an unorthodox role
in the rock film "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

r

our Years ago, Miriam Shor was
an unemployed actress whose only
credit was a bit part in a road
show of Fiddler on the Roof.
"I played the third villager on the left,"
she quips.
Then her agent handed her a scrap of
paper ,Arith the description of a character in a
new glam-punk rock musical by actor/direc-
tor John Cameron Mitchell.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch tells the story of
an East German transvestite rock 'n' roll diva
(Mitchell) who is coerced into a sex change
operation that is botched, leaving Hedwig
with an abridged essential body part — "the
angry inch" — and an identity crisis.
Shor was up for the role of Hedwig's long-
suffering husband/backup singer, Yitzhak,
who (according to the slip of paper) was "a
man to be played by a woman: surly, Jewish,
Croatian, ex-drag queen billed as `Krystall
Nacht, the Last Jewess of the Balkans.'"
Shor, who still carries that tattered scrap of
paper in her wallet, didn't bat an eyelash at
the prospect of playing a man. She aced the
audition and went on to create the role of
Yitzhak in the hit Off-Broadway production
of Hedwig.
She reprises the role in the electrifying
film version, which won the Audience and
Director awards at Sundance and opens
today in Detroit.
"I don't think of myself as a drag per-
former," confides the bold, chatty actress,
who is in her late 20s. "But I was drawn to
the role because the story is so subversive. I
like that it challenges perspectives about
what a man is and what a woman is. I like
that it forces viewers to rethink their labels
about sex and sexuality."
Shor says she also appreciates the subtle
Jewish content of the piece, which is equally
subversive. "Hedwig the German oppresses
Yitzhak the Jew, which is supposed to sound
familiar," she says.
All Yitzhak wants to be is a drag queen,
but Hedwig won't let him. Hedwig gets to
wear stiletto heels and zebra-print spandex,
while Yitzhak has to wear ratty jeans and a
beard. "Hedwig's feeling is, 'If I can't express
myself, neither can you,'" Shor says.
She feels it's ironic that her brooding char-
acter is named Yitzhak, which means "He
who laughs" in Hebrew. "Yitzhak is the most

8/17
2001

74

zx

Clockwise
moved to Italy with her fam-
f
rom top..
ily when she was just more
than a year old. After two
Miriam Shor:
years in Venice, the Shors
The actress
moved back to the United
will star as Julie
States and settled in
Herman in
Highland Park, Mich., and
a new NBC
then in Oak Park, "a more
sitcom, "Inside
Jewish neighborhood," said
Schwartz," this
her father, Francis Shor, a
fill. "Im making
professor in the interdisci-
plinary studies program at
Julie Jewish,"
Wayne State University.
she says.
'After her parents divorced
when she was 7, Shor shut-
John Cameron
tled back and forth between • Mitchell as
her father's house in Pleasant • Hedwig: "_an an
Ridge in suburban Detroit
actor who plays
and her mother's expatriate
someone who is _
digs in Turin, Italy.
forced to become
In Turin, young Miriam
a woman and
met the famed Italian
[Miriam] is an
author and Holocaust sur-
actress who plays
vivor Primo Levi and
a man who
befriended a Jewish boy
wants to be a
with the unfortunate name
drag queen,"
of Armando Schmutz.
says Mitchell.
In Detroit, she learned
„ •
Yitzhak's journey
Yiddish at a Workmen's
•
is
integral to
Circle program. "I never
Hedwigs
own
had a bat mitzvah, [but] I
journey
to
find
have always identified with
wholeness."
Judaism," Shor told the
Jewish News. "When I was
In one musical
at Workmen's Circle, I
number, Yitzhak,
learned to read and write
top center, wears
Yiddish. My grandparents
a cook's hat
spoke Yiddish and I used to
• inscribed with.
like hearing it," said the
Hebrew letters
actress, who observes the
High Holidays and
• spelling out the
Passover.
English word,
But Shor felt like an out-
"Chef:"
cast at Ferndale High
"nn kind of
School, her "mostly
the shadow that
WASP-y" public school.
N follows Hedwig
"I was sort of weird and
• and her journey
nerdy and my teeth stuck
k the whole time,"
out, 'like, 5 feet from my
says Sher Its a
face," the actress recalls. "I
journey to find
was constantly picked on, so
herself to love
I can totally relate to
herself, to basically
Yitzhak."
let herself off
Shor was drawn to acting
the hook."
after seeing her older sister,
Molly (now director of cor-
Miriam Shor
porate fund-raising for the
as Yitzhak in
Detroit Symphony
Hedwig and
Orchestra), in a high school play, and ulti-
the
Angry Inch."
mately found a home in the high school
I
don't
think of
drama department.
myself
as
a drag
But she was rejected from the musical the-
performer, but
ater program at the University of Michigan.
I was drawn to
Undaunted, she took regular drama classes;
the role because
after graduation, she packed up her jalopy,
the story is so
moved to New York and promptly landed the
subversive."
Fiddler gig.

k

unhappy human being on the planet," she
says with a laugh.
But at least the story has a Jewish in-joke
or two. In one musical number, Yitzhak
wears a cook's hat inscribed with Hebrew let-
ters spelling out the English word, "Chef."
Like the fictional Yitzhak, Shor is a
"Wandering Jew."
Born in Minneapolis, the future performer

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