“Your first film and play tend to be about your family a little bit. And then you get over it. You want to find out more about the world.”
In 1998, John Cameron Mitchell went the autobiographical (“slightly autobiographical,” in his own words) route in writing Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Drawing on his queer identity, Mitchell’s glam rock musical focused on an alienated teen who suffers botched gender affirming surgery and reinvents herself as the uncategorisable Hedwig in an explosion of light, noise, and Berlin sleaze.
The personal storytelling paid off, with the off-Broadway production winning awards, spawning a film adaptation, and touring the world. Now, Hedwig is heading to Australia for the second time, with performances scheduled for Melbourne in June and Sydney in July.
But long before his musical’s initial Down Under run between 2006-08, long even before Hedwig made its way to the bright lights of Broadway, Mitchell (gay, non-binary, fine with he/him) was just another up-and-coming actor in the 1980s who felt pressured to stay in the closet. The rising AIDS crisis saw a spike in homophobia, but the spectre of what was then still mockingly called “the gay plague” made living an authentic life more important.
“Everyone was like, ‘Well if you’re going to be an actor you have to be in the closet.’ I’m like, ‘Okay,’ and then as I saw all that life and death I decided, you know, you can tell me what to do on screen but you can’t tell me what to do in my life,” Mitchell tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
One particular audition, for producer Robert Shaye, stands out in his mind to this day. “I said, ‘Well, [this role is] kind of homophobic.’ He’d never heard the word before! He’s like, ‘Do you mean homoerotic?’ ‘No, there’s many words that begin with homo!’” Mitchell recalls.
Shaye rewrote the character as straight and cast Mitchell anyway. “There was no way to make it a gay character at that time in a teen movie. It wasn’t possible.”
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That’s why Hedwig was so fundamental to Mitchell’s career: it allowed him to write and play a queer character on his own terms.
Years later, Shaye would run into Mitchell at a performance of Hedwig and, with tears in his eyes, pledge millions to bring it to the silver screen with Mitchell directing. “Even though I had never directed any kind of film or shorts — I directed theatre. That’s what happened when one person was in charge instead of a fucking corporation. Lord of the Rings was happening and could have destroyed the company, but it was a hit.” (The Fellowship of the Ring and Hedwig and the Angry Inch were both released by New Line Cinema, Shaye’s company, in 2001.)
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Co-directed by Shane Anthony and Dino Dimitriadis, the new Australian production of Hedwig stars genderqueer performer Seann Miley Moore (The Voice) as the titular main character. Moore’s casting has drawn praise, but the role of Hedwig has often been a site of conflict. A mooted Sydney Festival production in 2020 was cancelled following backlash against the casting of cis queer actor Hugh Sheridan.
It’s a site of conflict Mitchell finds baffling. For one thing, he never saw Hedwig as trans — her identity is deliberately ambiguous. “Hedwig has always been a bridge for people reminding them of their personal ‘otherhood’. Everyone’s kind of a freak inside, whether they admit it or not.”
“I’m basically saying to the kids that cancellation is over. You can’t cancel a dictator, you know?”
Image: Seann Miley Moore in ‘Hedwig’ Credit: Shane Reid
Mitchell is hopeful but concerned for the current crop. Having just come off a 14-date college speaking tour, he sees a generation raised on screens and having hit puberty in lockdown, socially awkward, and deeply invested in granular and closely monitored modes of identity.
“Oppression Olympics,” he snorts. “All the intentions were good, but it’s separated us. This is the tactic, which is ‘stay in your lane.’ All that identity stuff has just become another constructed thing to sell to us. It’s time for you to learn other tactics, like punk — and to get laid while you’re at it.”
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is now playing in Melbourne. The production arrives in Sydney on July 17th. Ticket information for both cities is available here.
This John Cameron Mitchell interview features in the June-August 2025 issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ. If you’re eager to get your hands on it, then now is the time to sign up for a subscription.
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