Hedwig and the Angry Inch (musical)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Trask and a book by John Cameron Mitchell. The musical follows Hedwig Robinson, a genderqueer East German singer of a fictional rock and roll band. The story draws on Mitchell's life as the child of a U.S. Army major general who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was Mitchell's family babysitter and moonlighted as a sex worker at her trailer park home in Junction City, Kansas. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock style of David Bowie (who co-produced the Los Angeles production of the show), as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk performers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

The musical opened off-Broadway in 1998, and won the Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The production ran for two years, and was remounted with various casts by the original creative team in other US cities. Following a West End production in 2000, the musical was produced throughout the world in hundreds of stage productions.

The show's first Broadway incarnation, opening April 2014 at the Belasco Theatre, won Best Revival of a Musical at the 68th Tony Awards. The Broadway closing in September 2015 was followed by a U.S. national tour, launching at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre in October 2016 and ending at the Kennedy Center in July 2017.