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Playbill | 2007.march.26
Public's Passing Strange Rock Musical to Bring Back Berkeley Rep Cast
The Public Theater's presentation of the new musical Passing Strange will bring back the cast from the fall 2006 Berkeley Rep run when it begins previews May 1 and opens May 14.
Passing Strange is a new rock musical by the singer-songwriter-performance artist Stew and Heidi Rodewald, directed by and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen. Movement coordination is by Karole Armitage.
TheaterMania.com | 2007.march.16
Passing Strange wins Bay Area Critics Circle Award for 'Best Ensemble'
The winners of the 2006 San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards have been announced. The group, consisting of 21 critics, handed out a total of 56 awards — 31 in the drama categories and 25 in the musical categories.
Among the notable acting winners were Tim Miller (101 Beds), Rita Moreno (The Glass Menagerie), and Jessica Raum (Annie Get Your Gun), as well as the ensemble of Passing Strange, The Immigrant, and The Marriage of Figaro.
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Adam Duritz |
2006.december.3
Counting Crows' Adam Duritz talks about Passing Strange on his blog
Adam Duritz: So I am endlessly amazed by my friends Stew and Heidi. From the very first time I heard their music in a little hole-in-the-wall record shop in London I have been a huge fan. Their albums with The Negro Problem and as Stew are some of the best albums of the past decade. I would even go so far as to say that, if you ask me, he's the best songwriter there is working right now. Friday night in Berkeley, I saw something that will only help to confirm that view in more people's eyes.
Stew and Heidi and I always talked about our desire to write for the theatre. I still want to do it, maybe after this record. They're doing it right now. They've been work shopping a play through New York's Public Theatre for the past year or so and this Fall they finally put it into production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. There I sat Friday night, in the theatre where I saw so many plays as a kid, where so many of my friends had performed growing up, watching Stew and Heidi on-stage with three other musicians and six actors in their play Passing Strange.
It's a fantastic musical odyssey that traces the life of a young black musician from his church choir and garage punk band roots in LA's Crenshaw district through the pot haze of Amsterdam's coffee shops to the art riots of late 20th Century Berlin and finally back to LA again. It's about a search for identity. It's about his memory of a grandmother who was light enough to "pass" for white and the way that memory haunts him in the form of his own endless question of whether or not he is actually "passing" for black. It's about the fact that Stew and Heidi are just freakishly gifted and the play, while still unfinished and a work-in-progress, is also a work of genius. I'm jealous and I can't wait until Spring when it opens at the Public Theatre in New York. It closed tonight in Berkeley but I expect to visit Lafayette Street weekly to see how it progresses when it reopens.
