Stew And Rodewald Talk PASSING STRANGE And THE BROADWAY PROBLEM To NY Post

PASSING STRANGE creators Stew and Heidi Rodewald are featured in recent New York Post profile. The creative duo talked about the upcoming PASSING STRANGE film and its director, Spike Lee, as well as their upcoming projects.

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.

Discussing the impact Spike Lee had on the PASSING STRANGE film project, Stew shares that "the biggest thing he did for me was when he came into my dressing room [before one of the final filmed performances] and said, 'This is it. When you go out there, you need to get 'em on their feet.' I've been doing this for 25 years in clubs, and no one ever dared tell me to do anything when I'm in my zone. But I was like, 'You're right.' I'd never been challenged that way, and it fired everything up."

"Passing Strange: The Movie," opens Friday at the IFC Center and will be available on pay-per-view the following week.

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 have 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 Post 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.