PAPER Magazine: Beautiful People

April '99
Stephen Trask
Text by Angelo Pitillo/Photo by Joshua Jordan
Stephen wears a suit by New York Industrie, Shirt by Costume National Homme, Tie from Screaming Mimi's Socks by Nautica, Shoes by Adidas

STEPHENtrask MUSICIAN,COMPOSER Stephen Trask, who wrote all the songs for the long-running Off-Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, says the inspiration for the transsexual-rocker title character came from both an East German immigrant woman who used to baby-sit for Hedwig star John Cameron Mitchell while turning tricks in a Kansas trailer, and Trask's own experience playing in the Squeezebox house band, which backed up the club's drag queens. Now, with an new Hedwig cast still packing them in and an original cast-recording CD in the stores, Trask is truning his attention to a new album with his band, Cheater (the original Angry Inch), and an pcoming film of the show. "It will be opened up kind of like an anti-Cabaret," he explains. "Cabaret was about a sick performance troupe in Germany with an American outcast, and this is sort of the opposite--a German outcast with an American troupe."

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