Julia Tobey is looking pretty good for a woman who got her wig pulled out from underneath her just a month ago.

Self-producing live theater is hard. Even harder when you are an independent businesswoman who does not qualify for traditional funding sources that are the lifeblood of all nonprofit arts organizations.

Tobey has staked $95,000 – much of it her own – to bring Denver an oh-so-brief new staging of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s enduring 1998 counterculture classic rock musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” It opens tonight and runs through Aug. 17 at The Arch, a hipster modern industrial events center in the trendy RiNo Arts District.

It was never supposed to happen there.

Tobey is the proprietor of an ambitious new producing company called Give 5 that literally gives 5% of all revenues to local charities. She does nothing small. Her very first Give 5 theatrical production – a stage adaptation of the movie “Footloose” – earned nine nominations from the Colorado Theatre Guild’s annual Henry Awards.

She secured the rights to “Hedwig” in January. She had auditions in February and had her cast locked down in March.

For those whose minds have yet to be blown by “Hedwig” (and, yes, our protagonist might have chosen another word there): “Hedwig” tells the story of a Berlin Wall-era East German glam-rocker who comes to America hoping to find freedom and fortune. However, to leave her past behind, she has been forced to leave a little something of herself behind, too. If that all sounds a bit provocative and maybe even a bit raunchy, it is. But it is also deeply poetic and rooted in archetypal Greek legends. Think “The Rocky Horror Show” mixed with Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Plato.

The original Off-Broadway staging of “Hedwig,” with Mitchell creating the title role, ran for an astonishing 857 performances. But the show would not make its acclaimed Broadway debut for another 16 years.

Now in 2024, Tobey believes the “Angry Inch” has an angry new urgency. Transgender individuals are at a much higher risk of physical and sexual violence than others, some by as much as 56%, according to a new study published Tuesday by the American Medical Association. With hate crimes surging, the Human Rights Campaign last year declared a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the U.S.

“Genderqueer stories and transexual stories need to be amplified and supported now more than ever,” said Tobey, a married mother of two.

If only simply telling stories were not so personally, financially and emotionally fraught.

From the start, Tobey knew she did not want to present “Hedwig” in a traditional theater box. In the story, Hedwig is essentially performing her confessional cabaret in a seedy dive not far from where the boy she once gave her heart to is touring as a now big-time rock superstar. Think of that boy as headlining Ball Arena, with Hedwig singing in a nearby bowling alley (which is exactly where Cameron set the 2001 film adaptation).

“This story needs to be played in a gritty, dirty environment,” Tobey said. “We wanted to make it as immersive and authentic as possible.”

And she knew the perfect place: Herman’s Hideaway, the iconic, sticky-shoed South Broadway rock club that has hosted 33,000 bands since 1982. It’s almost impossible to get a concert venue to let you perform live theater in a rock club because of all the logistical challenges – like set pieces that have to stay put for weeks on end. It’s just easier to stick to one-off concerts.

But Herman’s owner Mark Roth was game. Contracts were signed. Plans were made. Money was spent. (Lots of it.)

Then, just before the July 4 holiday, Roth pulled a stunner: He signed Manny Fleming to a 3-5-year lease that any day now will turn Herman’s Hideaway into a Coco Bongo’s Latin club. Fleming had just five words for Tobey: “We can’t honor your dates.”

Less than four weeks to opening night, and “Hedwig” was homeless. Tobey needed a new venue, and she pivoted faster than a pirouetting ballerina. She approached the people at Nonplus Ultra, the management company that books The Arch, which is not ideally set up for a three-week theatrical run, either. The cost, for one, would be prohibitive. “But I told them, ‘We are in an emergency situation,’” Tobey said, and they gave her a break.

Still, all the associated costs of the move would balloon her original budget from $70,000 to close to six figures. Tobey put in more money. A whole host of local businesses from Meow Wolf Denver to Postino Broadway to Champagne Tiger – the new French American diner that took over the Tom’s Diner spot at 601 E. Colfax Ave. – have kicked in. Crowd-sourcing has brought in another $4,300.

Capacity at The Arch is 230, and Tobey figures she can break even if she sells 60 percent of all available seats for the 11-show run. (Tonight’s opening performance is already sold out.) She essentially has to sell a little more than 1,500 tickets over the next 17 days.

Bottom line: Tobey is taking a $100,000 gamble on Clark Destin Jones, a newcomer to Colorado who will play Hedwig. Jones’ only previous area stage credits have appearing in Vintage Theatre’s recent “The Legend of Georgia McBride” (as a drag queen named Rexy) and playing Samuel in “The Pirates of Penzance” for Performance Now in Lakewood. 

But of all the nerve-wracking parts of this particular journey Tobey is on, when it comes to Jones, she is totally Zen.

“I think of Clark as a young Mick Jagger mixed with a young Robin Williams,” she said. “I think the people who come will look back someday and say they saw him when. He’s just able to tap into something that is electrifying.”

Tobey has similar words of praise for director Kelly Van Oosbree. And actors Anne Terze-Schwarz and Emma Rebecca Maxfield, who are splitting the role of Hedwig’s androgynous lackey, Yitzhak. And, for that matter, her music director, stage manager and every other person on her creative team down to the assistant sound designer.  

She’s expanded the audience experience to include a 30–minute pre-show curated by a popular Denver performer named Jessica L’Whor that will feature drag performances, circus acts and burlesque.

“We’re bringing you an experience that celebrates queer artistry, identity exploration, and the power of love in all its forms,” L’Whor said.

Still, this is all a wild financial crapshoot, and Tobey will not know until her show closes on Aug. 17 whether she will break even. She’s not expecting to pay herself. On Wednesday, after another round of working on production-related tasks, she noticed she was having trouble gripping with her right hand.

“I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” she said.

So, I asked her the big, obvious question: Why bother?

“So many people view the performing arts as an optional element in life, and I view it as an essential nutrient,” she said. “Nothing brings me more joy than producing a show that allows folks to come inside and escape their troubles for a few hours.”