Obsidian Theater, in association with SRO Productions, will present Passing Strange, a new musical with book and lyrics by Stew and music by Heidi Rodewald and Stew.
The story focuses on the uneasy relationship of a young black man (Youth) with his life. Raised in a middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, our hero, a would-be songwriter, stews in a sea of conflicted cultural signals. He chafes under his mother's fixation on family ties and church and her bourgeois aspirations. So he sets out on his own - like pioneers Josephine Baker and James Baldwin - to Europe, seeking something "real." Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics and art await Youth in far-out Amsterdam and hyper-militant Berlin. His eyes are opened ever wider, even revealing what he left behind.
Obsidian Theater, in association with SRO Productions, will present Passing Strange, a new musical with book and lyrics by Stew and music by Heidi Rodewald and Stew.
The story focuses on the uneasy relationship of a young black man (Youth) with his life. Raised in a middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, our hero, a would-be songwriter, stews in a sea of conflicted cultural signals. He chafes under his mother's fixation on family ties and church and her bourgeois aspirations. So he sets out on his own - like pioneers Josephine Baker and James Baldwin - to Europe, seeking something "real." Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics and art await Youth in far-out Amsterdam and hyper-militant Berlin. His eyes are opened ever wider, even revealing what he left behind.
Obsidian Theater, in association with SRO Productions, will present Passing Strange, a new musical with book and lyrics by Stew and music by Heidi Rodewald and Stew.
The story focuses on the uneasy relationship of a young black man (Youth) with his life. Raised in a middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, our hero, a would-be songwriter, stews in a sea of conflicted cultural signals. He chafes under his mother's fixation on family ties and church and her bourgeois aspirations. So he sets out on his own - like pioneers Josephine Baker and James Baldwin - to Europe, seeking something "real." Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics and art await Youth in far-out Amsterdam and hyper-militant Berlin. His eyes are opened ever wider, even revealing what he left behind.