Risky Business

Twenty years after co-creating Hedwig and the Angry Inch, John Cameron Mitchell is struggling to be as sexy as he wants to be

- Anna Menta

JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL DIDN’T WANT TO embark on a world tour at the age of 55. “The joke is, I used to be a tour de force, and now I’m forced to tour,” he says with a laugh.

You might think with the rise of the LGBTQ movement, TV hits like Orange Is the New Black and Transparent, and more and more critically acclaimed films celebrating the queer experience (Moonlight, Tangerine, Call Me by Your Name, etc.), the co-creator and star of the gender-bending musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch would be luxuriating on his laurels. Instead, he’s hitting the road for a solo tour.

Mitchell conceived Hedwig, the story of an East German transgender rocker, with composer Stephen Trask, and after debuting off-Broadway in 1998, the show became an award-winning cult phenomenon. Mitchell directed and starred in the 2001 film adaptation (winning the best director award at the Sun dance Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination for his performance) and followed that up, in 2006, with Shortbus—a film he described at the time as employing “sex in new cinematic ways because it’s too interesting to leave to porn.” (Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, however, admiringly called it “hard-core porn with a soft heart.”) And in 2014, when Hedwig was revived for its first Broadway run, Mitchell received a Special Tony Award for his return to the role, after sold-out stints by Neil Patrick Harris and Michael C. Hall.