from arts camp. They started talking
about bands they like and they both
said my band, Cheater, not realizing
that they both knew me. After that
we started hanging out a lot, listen-
ing to music, going to the movies,
stuff like that.

JN: How did you start writing
Hedwig?
ST: I was already looking for a
collaborator when John told me he
wanted to write a rock musical with
real rock songs and a band on stage.
He had an idea for a show inspired
by a story from Plato’s Symposium.
He bought me that book and I
wrote “Origin of Love.” Around that
time, I helped start a night club,
Squeezebox, where I was the music
director/piano/guitar player. The
club featured drag queens singing
rock songs in front of a four-piece
band that I led. We invented Hedwig
as a character partly because I could
get us a gig there. That was our
launching pad in 1994. We did a cou-
ple of gigs there then moved to other
clubs as it evolved.

JN: In the show, Hedwig marries
Yitzhak, who is Jewish.
ST: Miriam Shor, who played her
originally, is Jewish and there was
something natural about this char-
acter being Jewish. We used to watch
a lot of Mel Brooks together, like The
Producers, and so naturally Germans
and Jews became part of the subject
matter.

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JN: Will you be in Detroit when it
runs at the Fisher?
ST: I will. I am writing a new show,
and my writing partner, Peter
Yanowitz, plays drums in Tits of Clay,
the on-stage band in Hedwig. The
show [we are writing] is called This
Ain’t No Disco! and is set in nightclubs
in New York in 1979/1980. We are in a
period of re-writes; so when we need
to work, I have to travel to where the
tour is. I live in Lexington, Ky., with
my partner, who is a professor at the
University of Kentucky.

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JN: Did you ever think that Hedwig
would become such a ground-
breaking phenomenon?
ST: I thought it would be an interest-
ing project that I did on the way to
becoming a rock star. I didn’t know
it would become the thing around
which I would organize my life. •

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JN: To what do you attribute the
show’s longevity?
ST: People like the songs and can
relate to the story. They relate to
Hedwig because she is a very real
person. People can find a deep
human connection with her — even

if specific events aren’t the same as
their own stories.

Hanna Corneua
plays Yitzhak, a
Jewish drag queen

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch runs Feb. 21-March 5 at Detroit’s Fisher
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February 16 • 2017

2140950

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