Stew's New Musical CLEAR To Be Developed At O'Neill Center This Summer

A new musical, "Clear," written by "Passing Strange" composer Stew, is oen of three new shows to be developed this summer at the O'Neill Theater Center's National Music Theater Conference, according to a report in Variety.

The show has music by Stew and Paul Oakley Stovall with lyrics by Stovall and additional music by Tom Kitt ("Next to Normal"), Irv Johnson and Stephen Goers. "Far-ranging story of a spiritual quest stretches from Ghana to Sweden to Seoul to Lake Michigan."

The conference will run June 26-July 16. A lineup for the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, a separate but related event also held every summer on the theater center's campus, remains to be announced.

It was recently announced that David Thompson, Librettist of the Off-Broadway hit THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, is currently working on a new musical project with composer Strew and Heidi Rodewald. The show is a musical version of the 1930 film "The Blue Angel," by Josef von Sternberg. The film made star Marlene Dietrich famous when she played the role of Lola Lola, a cabaret performer working at "The Blue Angel" club.

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.