It could be the scene of any rock band practice, here at Scott Pierce’s central Phoenix house.

On the front porch, Pierce and friends sit and talk idly. In the living room, Rick Gonzalez smokes cigarettes and plays his drum set loosely, waiting while guitar players fiddle with amplifiers. Someone’s riffing on an electronic keyboard. For a second, booming low feedback rips through the house before someone can adjust the public address system. Then the music starts.

And that’s when things get atypical.

James Asimenios, 25, walks into the living room and, wearing fierce red vinyl boots, spangly red lipstick and blue eyeshadow, penciled eyebrows, long, curly blonde wig and a black top with plunging neckline showing a scattered swath of dark chest hair, begins singing into a microphone.

He is Hedwig — botched post-op transgendered male, East German rock starlet. And this isn’t band practice. It’s a theater rehearsal.

This weekend, Asimenios’ new theater company, Artists’ Theatre Project, will debut with a production of John Cameron Mitchell’s off-Broadway hit “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” at the Tinseltown Tavern in Scottsdale.

The bar and restaurant formerly known as Hamburger Mary’s and home to weekly drag queen bingo games, will serve as one of the cheesy Kansas City restaurants in which Hedwig and the Angry Inch, her backing band, performs. On stage, Hedwig spins the tale of a bad gender-switch operation, a pathetic move to America from Berlin and a search for love even as her last soul mate, Tommy Gnosis, who used her songs to become a huge rock star. Hedwig is accompanied by sidekick and lover Yitzhak, played by Tracy Payne, 29.

The production will take full advantage of the intimacy of Tinseltown, director Pierce, 34, says — a contrast to when a touring production of the musical played at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in 2003. It was a sell-out hit, but for Pierce and his fellow showgoers, the hugeness of the arts center took away from the quirk-factor of “Hedwig.”

“It was a good show,” he says, “but it wasn’t intimate. Here, it’s going to be like going to a rock concert at a small club.”

The show will also take advantage of Artists’ Theatre Project’s whole ethos, to involve artists of all types to take part in stagework. One of Pierce’s neighbors, seamstress Sharyn Hinchcliffe, who hadn’t done theater costuming since her college days, was wrangled into creating Hedwig’s elaborate capes and costumes. Downtown Phoenix artist Ian Wender is having his illustrations made into animation by graphic designer Jennifer Tristan. Someone from the now-
defunct Nita’s Hideaway club donated a sound system.

“Everyone has said, ‘Oh my God, you’re doing ‘Hedwig?’ How can I help?,’ ” Pierce says. “It takes a village, right?”

Just like any other rock outfit, the show’s five-piece backing band has assembled the music not from the actual written score (“It was pretty bad,” Pierce says), but from listening to a soundtrack CD and picking the parts by ear. Pierce is proud of the band he assembled; its members are even being courted by Nearly Naked Theatre for its August production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” he says.

Artists’ Theatre Project has the rights to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” through June and Pierce expects the show will be extended for another two weekends at Tinseltown Tavern. After that, he’d like to do a monthly punk rock karaoke-type show with female impersonators. And though the company hopes to change venues for each show — they’re doing “Hair” before the upcoming presidential election “as a protest,” Pierce says — the director wants to make the experience more than just about what’s on stage.

“I like people to be drawn into the action,” he says. “Rather than sit there and be disconnected.”