Beloved performers regularly return to characters they made famous on Broadway: Carol Channing did it (over and over again) in “Hello, Dolly!,” while more recently Nathan Lane revisited “The Producers,” as did Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal in “Rent.” But Mr. Mitchell’s relationship with Hedwig is more complex.

He created the character by drawing on his own life: The original piece, developed at the punk drag club Squeezebox, focused on the character of Tommy, a general’s son (like Mr. Mitchell) who had a German babysitter (inspired by a woman who cared for the Mitchell family in Kansas).

Mr. Mitchell and his collaborator, the show’s composer and lyricist Stephen Trask, decided to focus on the babysitter, creating a back story in which she grew up as Hansel, a “slip of a girly-boy” in East Berlin, and underwent a sex change — which was botched — to become Hedwig and marry a soldier who would take her to America. Abandoned there in Kansas, the transgender Hedwig met Tommy, like her an aspiring musician, whom she came to see as her soul mate. But Tommy ended up stealing her music, leaving Hedwig deeply embittered.

Among those working with Mr. Mitchell on “Hedwig” was Mr. Steeb, a bassist. They were a couple for six years before breaking up, in part because of Mr. Steeb’s struggle with addiction. He died at 36 in 2004 but remains a powerful force in Mr. Mitchell’s memory.

“In a weird way he has become Tommy for me, which has made doing the show now almost emotionally harrowing at times,” said Mr. Mitchell, who seems well equipped to handle it. (His favorite playwrights are Beckett and Pinter.) “Loss has been a kind of determining event in my life. Doing the role now feels a little bit of a monument to Jack. I think my Hedwig will have more ragged edges, more punk than in past performances.”

Playing Hedwig again was far from Mr. Mitchell’s mind for a few years after Mr. Steeb’s death, until he donned a wig again in 2007, when he and Mr. Trask performed songs during a concert in Seoul, where the musical has long been popular. The two men began talking about doing a “Hedwig” concert in New York. “I thought it would be the two of us for a night in Marie’s Crisis,” Mr. Trask said, referring to a small piano bar in the West Village.

The idea grew into a possible Broadway production. Yet Mr. Mitchell was adamant that he didn’t want a long run, though he would do a few shows a week if producers could find another actor to do the rest.