My History With Hedwig

This is a letter to Michael Mayer, the director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway. Hopefully it will be in his hands on Tuesday, opening night.

April 20, 2014

Dear Mr. Mayer,

My name is Lindsay Hope Simon. If you don't have time to read my novel below (though I hope you do), the moral of the story is HEDWIG is the most important show that's ever come into my life, which happened a decade ago, and thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my soul for putting it on Broadway like this. I have never in my life looked forward to something more than I looked forward to this production of HEDWIG, and it fulfilled my every wish, hope, and expectation.

This story begins on August 7, 2004. And I beg you to stay with me, because where it ultimately leads is to sitting in row H of the Belasco Theatre on April 19, 2014.

2004: I see RENT for the first time, and my subsequent obsession with my first Broadway experience leads me to HEDWIG (because of JCM's nod to it in the film). I spend most of high school very confused about gender because of my love of Angel and Hedwig and my newfound desire to be a drag queen, which I tell no one about. That's something I've never quite resolved. ANYWAY.

2005: Falling in love with HEDWIG leads me to write a paper about Plato's Symposium as a sophomore in high school. My teachers aren't expecting that.

2007: Theatre, my love of RENT in particular, and my affinity for New York cause me to apply early decision to NYU. I never consider anywhere else, and get accepted and placed in Playwrights, at my own request.

Fall 2008: I arrive in New York just before the closing of RENT, in time to see it for a ninth and tenth time in its last week. Incoming Tisch kids are each given a ticket to Spring Awakening. I see it with a friend who knows someone in the cast; I end up backstage at a Broadway show within a week of living in New York. Around Halloween I go to a not-quite-authorized one-night performance of HEDWIG at the Highline Ballroom.

Spring 2010: Second semester of second year I direct a piece of HEDWIG for my directing class (the scene including Origin of Love). I desperately want to do the whole thing, but I still haven't managed it. Spring of 2010 is when rumors first start flying that JCM is bringing HEDWIG to Broadway. (I've been waiting for this production for four years.)

April 2010: I meet you at a moderated discussion with Bob Vorlicky at Tisch. CAP girls ask about Spring Awakening, PHTS kids ask obnoxious but intelligent questions about collaboration. I ask you after about working with Michael Krass. You diplomatically don't say much.

July 2010: I see American Idiot for the first time. I listen to the soundtrack nonstop for the next six months.

October 2010: I see American Idiot for the third time with a talkback when BJA is in it for the first time.

November 2010: I go to a panel that Kevin Adams is a part of. I make sure to ask him a question (because no one else is and I want him to see me) and I talk to him afterwards. We meet up once for dinner a couple weeks later and I ask a million lighting questions. I subsequently see everything he works on (having already seen Hair and Next to Normal).

January 2011: A friend and I spend 36 hours in Boston to see American Idiot twice, the eighth and ninth time I'm seeing the show.

April 2011: I write a paper for Bob's gay and lesbian theatre class (my third class with him) about Hedwig and authentic performance beyond gender and genre.

May 2012: You speak at Tisch salute. It's an incredible speech, an extremely satisfying blend of inspiring and being honest about the faults of the institution that we love and hate and the cruel mistress of a business we're trying to be a part of. I record the whole thing for Bob, by now a dear friend, who can’t make it.

June 2013: Announcement of HEDWIG coming to Broadway with NPH directed by you and lit by Kevin. I start freaking out immediately.

October 2013: I attend an early screening of Broadway Idiot. And remember my love for rock musicals and your and Kevin’s work.

February 2014: I start working for an amazing woman who is part of the production team for the tony awards and a sometimes Broadway producer. I make sure she knows I have never been so excited about a show as I am about HEDWIG.

April 2014: She has press seats to HEDWIG. She takes me.

That was about 24 hours ago. I still barely have words for my feelings about the production. The themes of this show, of love, why and how we love, that search for wholeness, have echoed through my life for the last decade since I first met HEDWIG in 2004. The idea of duality, but that somehow duality is not synonymous with binary, is one I can never escape. I have seen these themes arise in my life, in projects I've worked on, and in everything I'm inspired to create theatrically, including a magical-realism play I'm writing about Berlin in the 1970s.

I was nervous, because the combination of you plus Kevin plus Neil doing this show put my expectations higher than anything. It seemed impossible that you could live up to what I needed this show to be, based on my love of it and all three of your individual bodies of work. (I'd never seen Neil live before yesterday, since he hasn’t been on Broadway in the almost-ten years since I started seeing shows, but I've loved HIMYM from the beginning, and Dr. Horrible, and followed his LGBT advocacy.)

I left the theatre speechless in the best possible way. The show had all the heart that it should, and it takes a lot of heart for one person to fill up that big of a space. It didn't feel lost, or small, or like it was trying to be something it wasn't. I think it's delightfully updated for today. I think using the Hurt Locker and being able to throw a mention of 9/11 into the show is brilliant. 9/11 is, in many ways a contemporary parallel. "Where were you when?" I went to Berlin in 2011 and became obsessed with history that is still present. Hedwig's history is still present on her body, and she has to come to terms with that.

I read something amazing Neil said in the interview with Out magazine last month. He said that there was a moment in his mid-20s where he came to the conclusion that he would always be alone, but that it wasn't a sad realization, just a fact as far as he was concerned. And I realized I kind of feel the same way, and my love of Hedwig to an extent come out of the idea of how love is ancient and beyond our control and all we can do is love those who come into our path, whether they love us or not. We only control how we deal with not being loved. Love has to be selfless because it's bigger than the self, it's the bit of the universe in you reaching out to a bit of the universe in someone else. Hedwig understands that and eventually gets through the pain of it to a point of acceptance. Loving deeply means hurting deeply and then letting go.

About a month ago I saw a video for the show in which you called HEDWIG universal. And I think you're totally right though plenty of people (my boss included) would disagree. It brought tears to my eyes to hear you say that; it gave me faith that the show wasn't just going to be an NPH spectacle machine. Watching the show yesterday (it's taken me an entire day to find actual words to articulate myself instead of just flailing) I was reminded of everything I love about Hedwig, the combination of aggression and vulnerability, heart and strength. It's what I'm working on myself in a new piece I'm currently calling "Stardust and Iron," about what people are made of. This show is that - ancient and cosmic and strong. I managed to behave myself pretty well, I only let out one "oh yes" out loud when the back wall opened up into the wall of lights. Everything was so smart. The evolution of the set, the lights (duh), the modernization of the script for the time and location. Midnight Radio was perfect. I cried.

I've seen a lot of bad theatre lately. And ever since I started theatre school I've said there's something to be learned from bad theatre too. But I've been reaching a point of stagnation in my own work, and frustration with the bad work I've been seeing, so I cannot tell you how inspiring, energizing, refreshing, fulfilling, and rewarding it was to see this yesterday and feel like theatre can do important things and tell important stories and broadway can take risks and be loud and not fit neatly in a box.

So in the end all I can say is thank you. My story is my thank you, because I have to believe that what we all want most as artists is to touch the lives of others, and hopefully affirm a belief in something bigger than ourselves (whatever we call it). Art is bigger than us. This production didn't change my life. HEDWIG's presence has affected my life for the last decade. This incarnation wasn't going to change any of that. But it affirmed the beliefs and values I've cultivated as I've grown up, and that's something really valuable to a 24-year-old artist hoping that what she's doing matters, or will someday. So thank you. I could talk about this show forever. I'm sure Bob and I will talk after Tuesday. And I'll be back again soon.

Rage, love, glitter, and glam,
Lindsay Hope Simon