JOAN MARCUS

arts&life

theater

The
Origin
Of Love

Stephen Trask chats with the JN about Hedwig

and the Angry Inch, heading to the Fisher.

Euan Mortan as Hedwig

ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

BRUCE GLIKAS

I

t’s been almost 25 years
since composer Stephen
Trask began writing music
and lyrics for a show about a
drag queen.
That show went on to
become the colossal hit Hedwig
and the Angry Inch, moving
from downtown New York City
nightclubs to the Off-Broadway
stage to becoming a feature
film — and ultimately play-
ing on Broadway. Hedwig is an
innovative, heartbreaking and
wickedly funny rock musical
about a transgender German
who moves to a trailer park in
Kansas City and starts a rock
’n’ roll band. The show has won
numerous awards, including
four Tony awards. Now, Hedwig’s
national tour, directed by
Michael Mayer, will play at the
Fisher Theatre Feb. 21-March 5.
Trask, raised in Connecticut

before earning a degree in
music at Wesleyan College,
began collaborating on this
project in the 1990s with John
Cameron Mitchell, who wrote
the book. Over the past couple
of decades, Trask has written
some two dozen musical scores
for movies, including In Good
Company, Dreamgirls, Meet the
Parents and more. But writing
Hedwig became a labor of love
that changed Trask’s life.
Trask talked to the JN about
life and the creation of Hedwig.

JN: Stephen Trask wasn’t your
given name — you were born
Stephen Schwartz. Why did
you change your surname?
ST: In 1992, my manager at the
time said to me ‘One day you
will write a rock musical that
will change the way everyone
thinks about rock musicals. And

“Stephen Trask’s songs have everything,” the New
Yorker wrote. “Melody, swagger, piano, wit, electric
guitar, harmony, fun and angst.”

34

February 16 • 2017

jn

when you do your name can’t
be Stephen Schwartz.’ When
I was a kid I thought it was
cool that there was this other
Stephen Schwartz [Pippin,
Godspell, Wicked] out there and
that he was a famous song-
writer. But I knew my manager
was right.

JN: Why did you pick Trask?
ST: Trask is my partner’s name
[Michael Trask] and it sounded
and felt right. I actually liked
the name Schwartz and the
Jewishness of it, and I miss that.
I grew up in a Jewish home,
went to Hebrew school, had a
bar mitzvah and both my par-
ents were involved in the syna-
gogue — my father was head
of the youth program there.
My mother’s maiden name is
Rhodes and I thought of using
that, but it didn’t have a ring
to it.

JN: Have you met the other
Stephen Schwartz?
ST: Yes. He came to our
dressing room when we were
doing Hedwig at the Jane Street
Theater. He said, ‘If I knew you

wanted the name I would have
let you have it!’ Every now and
then I receive a small royalty
check of his and vice versa.
It’s never a lot of money so we
made an agreement that as long
these checks are under $20, we
would let it slide.

JN: You collaborated on
Hedwig with John Cameron
Mitchell. How did you meet
him?
ST: John and I met on a plane
from L.A. to New York. The
in-flight movie was being pro-
jected on the wall directly in
front of me and I couldn’t stand
it. John was the only person not
watching and there were two
empty seats next to him. I asked
if I could sit next to him and
then plunked the Fassbinder
biography I was reading on the
seat between us to see if it start-
ed a conversation. It worked.
We hit it off.
For the next few years, we
kept running into each other
out of the blue in New York. One
day, a roommate of mine ran
into John on the subway. The
two of them knew each other