John Cameron Mitchell to host Hedwig and the Angry Inch sing-along in Toronto

Remember the sing-along The Sound of Musicwith eager fans dressed as nuns, trilling about how whiskers on kittens were some of their favourite things?

Put a fork in that schnitzel with noodles. It’s done. Instead, you’d be well advised to get out your spikiest heels and tease that hair up to the stratosphere with attitude.

It’s time for the sing-along Hedwig and the Angry Inch, taking place at TIFF Bell Lightbox on June 24 at 9:30 p.m. as part of Bent Lens: Pride on Screen, a mini fest presented by TIFF and the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, timed to coincide with WorldPride festivities in Toronto.

There to host the proceedings will be the work’s creator, John Cameron Mitchell, who brought it to life along with composer/lyricist Stephen Trask.

“I have no idea how it’s all going to work out,” Mitchell laughs on the phone from his Manhattan apartment, “but then, I never knew where Hedwig would lead me.”

Now recognized as one of the modern classics of queer culture, Mitchell’s story about a German boy who becomes an American girl during the final days of the Berlin Wall — but suffers horribly because his sex-change operation left him with nothing but the “angry inch” of the title — has always been an edgy piece of work.

Opening off-Broadway in 1998, it became a cult hit, turned into a 2001 movie (which Mitchell shot in Toronto) and is currently the hottest ticket on Broadway, winning four Tony Awards earlier this month, including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, going to the great Neil Patrick Harris.

“It’s funny how things work out,” muses Mitchell. “The original show was never a big money-maker, the movie was initially a flop, although Hedwig is always playing somewhere around the world. It’s so popular in Korea they even had a TV reality show to pick the next Hedwig in the last production.”

But the kind of fame and money the show is bringing in now were never on Mitchell’s mind. “Honestly, the only thing I hoped was I might make enough to get me out of acting.

“I always find it healthy not to envision your reach as much as what’s in front of you — that reading, that script, that performance, that movie — and making it as good as it can be. The minute you start to think, ‘Oh god, this could be a huge success!’ the karmic deities of show-business start sharpening their knives for you.”

He pauses for a moment, then flings out an initially surprising thought.

“You know, I’m glad I didn’t first put it on today, in the time of the Internet. Because nowadays there are too many eyes and too many wagging tongues on everything you do out there. The baby has to be allowed to grow up in the dark.”

Although Mitchell was responsible for the hilarious update of Hedwig on Broadway — which has it taking place on the abandoned set of Hurt Locker: The Musical, a show that closed halfway through its opening night — he affirms that “I kept my distance so that (director) Michael Mayer and the amazing Neil could shape it their own way.

“Some people write their great piece and spend the rest of their life trying to manage and control it. Not me. In our published script, I always encourage people to adapt and change things so that Hedwig is always performing in the place she’s performing in.”

“I heard that there was a great Hedwig in Toronto last year by Seth Drabinsky,” says Mitchell, referring to the Lower Ossington Theatre production. “That’s the kind of thing I live to hear about.”

But in the next breath, Mitchell admits he’s written a sequel to Hedwig and he’ll “probably appear in it myself” when it goes into a workshop production this fall.

“Playing Hedwig is a young man’s game, so I don’t know what I’m thinking about. I wrote it with a lot of thoughts in mind. The first one is about Hedwig finding out who she is. The sequel deals with the results of that search. Finding the union within yourself is the ultimate goal.

“Hedwig didn’t choose her fate, but her wound created something absolutely unique. It’s about the possibility of art healing, of love mixing with art to find some kind of wholeness and peace. At one point she writes, ‘We are all Hedwig’ on her body.”

And although Hedwig remains a hot button in the world of gender politics, it’s all very simple to Mitchell.

“She’s more than a woman or a man. She’s a gender of one and that is accidentally so beautiful.”

So come as you are, or as you think you are, to the screening on June 24. But brush up on the lyrics to “Wig in a Box” first.

Note: This story has been edited from a previous version that incorrectly named the director of the Broadway production.

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