PASSING STRANGE creators Stew and Heidi Rodewald are featured in recent New York Times profile. The creative duo talked about their careers and upcoming projects, as well as providing a peek into their creative process.
PASSING STRANGE, which transferred to Broadway from the Public Theater in February of 2008, brought much acclaim for the talented musicians. From there, numerous opportunities have presented themselves and are keeping the performers in the spotlight.
Coming up shortly are two projects for Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Festival. One of the pieces, "The Broadway Problem, will see them both take to the stage again.The show will be be performed on Aug. 19, is a refashioning of Broadway standards, with considerable attention devoted to black Broadway. The pair hinted at some of the fresh interpretations we can expect; for example, "Oklahoma" reimagined as a samba.
Other projects include writing the music for upcoming musical "Punk Princess," which will appear at the New York Musical Festival this October; Stew's solo album, to be released in February, 2010; and the song cycle, "Making It," which will play St. Ann's Warehouse in February. The piece is billed as "a multimedia pastiche of song, video and text. In it, Stew tackles a familiar topic: his past, namely his and Ms. Rodewald's career trajectory over the past five years."
To read the entire New York Times article, click here.
Stew rocked Broadway the way it never had before when his musical, Passing Strange, opened in 2008. It won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and made a star out of its writer, Stew, and his writing partner, Heidi Rodewald. Stew and Rodewald return to American Songbook (they performed in the series in 2003) with music from their early career and the band they founded in 1995, The Negro Problem. The group was ironically named to highlight the music industry's problems with an all white band fronted by a black man whose influences were not only Stevie Wonder but also Stephen Sondheim. Stew's discography includes four recordings with The Negro Problem, and another four as Stew, two of which were named Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly: Guest Host and The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs.
