From real life to the stage: Stew answers questions about play turned film

The Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union was filled with laughter, rock music and a Tony-Award winning playwright on Wednesday after the showing of “Passing Strange.”

“Is it custom to talk over credits?” asked the Broadway play’s narrator and composer  Stew, whose birth name is Mark Stewart.

He led an open panel discussion after the free screening of the play-turned-movie.

“Passing Strange,” directed by Spike Lee, was a part of the “Reclaiming the Right to Rock: Black Experiences in Rock Music,” a collaborative effort from several departments and organizations including the Indiana Memorial Union Board and the Archives of African American Music and Culture. The film is a semi-autobiographical portrayal of Stew’s life through music.

“This play is all about the change and all about the music, all of these things are going to happen in the music,” said Stew.

Stew first answered questions from the audience dealing with the creative process he used to bring his music composition to the stage.

“Having never written a play, I would write a piece of music, then work with the director and music collaborator and we would then put it on a table,” he said. “We would talk about them in particular as if we had just found them.”

Stew said he was most impressed with the translation of his play to film by Lee.
“He would make the tiniest changes, but they were absolutely huge, that was the real musical genius,” said Stew.

The careful angles Lee chose added a new side to the story that was different from watching the play on Broadway. Stew added that Lee was able to strike a delicate balance between the story line and the musical performance.

At the close of the panel, Stew addressed the topic of the presence of African American performers in rock music.

“I grew up with all the music in Los Angeles and heard every possible kind of music from all kinds of people,” he said. “People judge culture by what is famous, that’s pop culture, not real culture.”