The Actors
Angel Adedokun - Sherry/Mariana/Sudabey
Rolanda D. Bell - Mother
Myles Brown - Hugo/Christophe/Terry
Devin Cunningham - Youth
Albert Hodge - Narrator
Champagne Hughes - u/s for Sherry/Mariana/Sudabey & Edwina/Renata/Desi
Jeffrey Hyche - u/s Mr. Franklin Jones/Joop/Venus
Chanel Tilghman - Edwina/Renata/Desiz
Shakur Tolliver - Mr. Franklin Jones/Joop/Venus
The Band
Bennett Hull - Guitar
Vincent De Jesus - Drums
Michael 'Tiny' Lindsey - Bass
The Creative Team
Daniel Alley - Music Director
Chris Chamberlin-Miner - Sound Board Operator
William Thomas Hodgson - Director
Romello Huins - Scenic Designer
Starr Jiang - Properties Designer
Stephanie Johnson - Lighting Designer
Heather Kelly-Laws - Stage Manager
Taylor Wesley - Assistant Stage Manager
Brendan West - Sound Engineer
Jasmine Milan Williams - Costume Designer
The Sponsors
Season Sponsors
Anonymous
Craig & Kathy Moody
Don Kaufman & Carol Amyx
Chard Nelson & Jan Berman
Show Sponsors
The Grubb Company
Joe Kane
Russell Nelson
Michael & Gretchen Schnitzer
Jon Wagner & Lynne Hollingsworth
Watch the trailer
Either click on the above photo to watch the trailer, or head over to YouTube!
About the Play
A young bohemian charts a course for “the real” through sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, this show takes us from Black middle-class America to Amsterdam, Berlin and beyond on a journey towards personal and artistic authenticity. Winner, Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical!
“Passing Strange is about discovering possibility,” explains creator Stew. “I wasn’t young when I wrote this, but I was trying to write it for younger people, the play I would’ve liked to see if I was going to see a musical. I wanted young people to feel it in some way.” Identity is also at the heart of the musical, a struggle that Stew finds universal and timeless: “Really trying to get to the core of who you are is always essential. Differentiating between the static around you and the parts of that static that correspond with something that’s true to you or not.”
“Watching Passing Strange changed me, changed what my art could be. I just saw myself in this.” says director William Hodgson. “There’s just something about the rock nature of this where I’m just having such a good time. And I don’t always feel that in the theatre. The commune between the actors, the musicians, and the audience: it feels like centering that in a theatre experience is sometimes what I’m missing from my theatre experience. There’s something that’s so accessible in this play, in the writing.”
Watch an Interview with Stew
Either click on the above photo to watch the trailer, or head over to YouTube!
About Stew
Mark Stewart, known by his stage name Stew, is an American singer-songwriter and playwright from Los Angeles. In the early 1990s, he formed a four-piece band called The Negro Problem. He went on to release albums under his own name, including Guest Host and The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs, released in 2000 and 2002 respectively and both named Album of the Year by Entertainment Weekly. Starting in 2004, he began writing the book, lyrics and music (with Heidi Rodewald) for his semi-autobiographical rock musical Passing Strange, produced with the support of the Sundance Institute and The Public Theater, which won him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Passing Strange had successful runs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in and off-Broadway at The Public Theater in New York City during the spring of 2007. It received critical praise from both the New York Times and Variety and opened on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre in February 2008 under the aegis of producer Liz McCann and the Shubert Organization. The play garnered seven Tony nominations in 2008, with Stew receiving four nominations and winning the award for Best Book.
About Heidi Rodewald
Heidi Rodewald is the Tony Award-nominated, Obie Award-winning co-composer of the musical Passing Strange, which transferred from The Public Theater to Broadway in 2008 and then was made into a film by director Spike Lee. Rodewald joined the band The Negro Problem in 1997, where she began a longtime collaboration with singer/songwriter, Stew, and with him released ten critically acclaimed albums. She is co-composer with Stew of Brooklyn Omnibus BAM Next Wave Festival (2010), Making It St. Ann’s Warehouse (2010), Family Album Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2014), Notes of a Native Song Harlem Stage (2015), Wagner, Max! Wagner!! Kennedy Center (2015), and The Total Bent at The Public Theater (2016). Rodewald scored two short films for director Leigh Silverman: Over The River & Through The Woods (2017), and Reprieve (2018). She is the composer with librettist Donna DiNovelli of The Good Swimmer BAM Next Wave Festival (2018).
About William Hodgson
William Thomas Hodgson is an actor, director, and educator, based out of Oakland, CA. He received his MFA from U.C. San Diego, and is co-artistic director of the Oakland Theater Project. Regional credits include Romeo, Midsummer, Macbeth, How to Catch Creation (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), It Can’t Happen Here (Berkeley Rep), Calligraphy (TheatreWorks), El Henry, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (La Jolla Playhouse), An Octoroon (Mixed Blood Theatre), Trufaldino Says No (Shotgun Players), Seussical the Musical (Berkeley Playhouse), and I Am My Own Wife (Oakland Theater Project).
