Hedwig Robinson (John Cameron Mitchell) is the lead singer of a rock band referred to as Hedwig and the Indignant Inch, a nearly unknown outfit touring a series of diners referred to as Bilgewater’s. Hedwig is livid that her former lover, Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), stole her songs and have become an enormous star. She is pursuing each a copyright lawsuit and Tommy himself: It simply so occurs that the Indignant Inch’s small-time venues are in the identical cities the place Tommy is performing sold-out live shows.
Between songs, Hedwig harangues her meager viewers with the story of her life. By means of her narration and flashback, we study that she grew up as a “slip of a girly boy” named Hansel in East Berlin, residing in a small condominium together with his domineering mom. Unable to search out real love on that facet of the Wall, Hansel dreamed of escaping to the West within the hope of discovering his different half. Enter Luther (Maurice Dean Wint), an American serviceman who persuades him to bear gender reassignment surgical procedure to allow them to marry and transfer to the States.
Hansel’s mom arranges the operation with a shady physician and the process goes badly mistaken. Hansel is left disfigured with the titular indignant inch, a mound of flesh “the place [his] penis was once, the place [his] vagina by no means was.” Adopting his mom’s identify, Hansel turns into Hedwig and strikes to Junction Metropolis, Kansas, with Luther, however their marital bliss is short-lived. He leaves her for a youthful boy, abandoning her in a dreary trailer park hundreds of miles from residence.
Alone and depressed, Hedwig finds empowerment in a blond wig and begins a band with a number of Korean military wives, nonetheless dreaming of discovering her different half. That is when she will get a babysitting gig and meets Tommy, a naive Christian child, and the pair kind an prompt connection.