American musician and composer Stephen Trask was BOTD in 1967. Born in New London, Connecticut to a middle-class family, he graduated from Wesleyan University. After graduating, he moved to New York City, performing with The Corner Store Dance Company. He was also music director and house band member at the drag club Squeezebox, performing alongside Deborah Harry, rock bands Hole and Green Day. While resident at Squeezebox, his friend John Cameron Mitchell began performing as Hedwig, an East German transsexual glam rock singer, unhappily supplanted to a trailer park in the Mid-West and pursuing the one-time protégé who stole her songs. In 1998, Trask and Mitchell co-wrote and produced the Off-Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with songs written by Trask and inspired by glam rockers David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. First performed in a derelict West Village hotel, the show became a cult success and eventually the toast of New York theatre, attracting celebrity New Yorkers including Larry Kramer, The Lady Bunny and Parker Posey. A successful film adaptation followed in 2001, directed by and starring Mitchell, with Trask repeating his dual on- and offscreen roles. Premiering at the Sundance Festival, the film won the Audience Award and Best Director for Mitchell. ector for Mitchell and later earned him a Golden Globe acting nomination. The film became a critical and commercial hit, hailed as a breakthrough for representations of LGBTQ characters onscreen. Post-Hedwig, Trask worked as a film composer, scoring the indie hits The Station Agent, The Savages and Lovelace alongside Paramount Studio’s adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls, directed by Bill Condon, and the family comedy Little Fockers. He and Mitchell returned to work on Hedwig for its 2014 Broadway premiere, starring Neil Patrick Harris, wining the Tony Award for best musical revival. Trask lives in Lexington, Kentucky with his husband Michael Trask. He identifies as non-binary and uses he/him and she/her pronouns.