Exquisite Corpse: Exploring themes of gender nuances through Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Abstract

John Cameron Mitchell uses his punk rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch to explore themes of sexuality and gender nuances in the queer community. Moreover, the themes of love and acceptance are explored through Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium. This is the ideology that drives the character of Hedwig; however, she is not able to find love until she denounces this ideology and accepts herself. Throughout history, the theatre has been a male-dominated profession. Even though modern theatres are the perfect medium for an exploration of gender and sexuality, that freedom of expression is most often reserved for men. If we look at gender expressive musicals like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and cross-dressing characters such as Edna Turnblad from Hairspray, the common denominator is that these roles are exclusively reserved for men. That is why it is a tragedy that the character of Yitzhak, a male part played by a woman, repeatedly goes unnoticed when discussing gender expression in musical theatre. This further goes to show that women are not allowed the same freedom of expression in performative acts that men are encouraged to perform. Moreover, while Hedwig is a character that was written for a man to perform in an act of challenging the gender normative, a couple of women have had the honor of portraying the role on Broadway. Even though Hedwig is a cross-dressing character, Mitchell pushes the envelope when it comes to challenging the norms of what drag performers can do by tearing off the drag persona onstage. Although musical theatre is the perfect medium of gender expression, the industry must do better when it comes to women, non-binary, and genderqueer individuals. That is why Hedwig and the Angry Inch is an important show that writers who want to create queer characters should study.