Far From Our Town: Stew Exposes the “Filter of Decorum”
Stew, the creative force behind the rock musical Passing Strange, tells the Insider about having the musical made into a movie by Spike Lee, “black folks passing as black folks,” and other essentialist curiosities of American life.
For some people, authentic black speech means you sound like you’re from Louisiana. And I’ve always felt — and I think I’m right — that accents are regional, they’re not really racial.
– Stew
– Stew
Mark Stewart, aka Stew, isn’t exactly a boy from the ‘hood. After growing up in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, he moved to Amsterdam and Berlin, where he pursued his career as a singer-songwriter. In 2004 and 2005, he and his musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald brought what he calls a “wild stack of papers with coffee stains” to the Sundance Theatre Lab and transformed it into the rock musical Passing Strange, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an artist coming of age in Europe that won the 2008 Tony for Best Book and inspired Spike Lee to document the final Broadway performances on film. At Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab, Stew also developed a companion screenplay to Passing Strange called We Can See Today. “He talks about the bourgeois African-American experience,” says Michelle Satter, Founding Director of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, “and it’s a world that I haven’t necessarily seen before.” During a brief stopover in Los Angeles in the days before the Festival, Stew talked to the Insider about “black folks passing as black folks” and other essentialist curiosities of American life.
Insider: How did you get the idea?
Stew: Our departing president was the inspiration for Passing Strange when I found out that George Bush the Second hadn’t ever been to Europe. It had a profound effect on me because I thought, “Okay, here’s a guy who owns planes. How could you be so rich and not go to Africa, or not go to China, or not go to South America?” I was sitting around at 17 going, “Oh my God, if I could just get to wherever — San Francisco, New York, Paris!” I wanted to go to the whole world. So I wrote Passing Strange to chronicle an American story that was about being curious about the world and not about Our Town, the small town thing.
Insider: Do you see it as a political piece of art?
Stew: I do. I think ultimately any personal statement can be political. And while it’s heavily documented in the world of literature, I feel like in film and in theatre we could have more stories about black expatriate-ism. And more stories not just about the experience of “Oh, Josephine Baker went to Paris, and then she was a hit!” But let’s talk about why Josephine Baker felt she had to leave in the first place.
Insider: What does your protagonist hope to find in Europe?
Stew: Everything that he hears from his community is through the filter of decorum or the filter on how black people behave. You know, “You’re supposed to play football or basketball if you’re black,” or “Why don’t you wear this because this is what black teenagers are supposed to wear,” or “Why don’t you talk like this because this is how black teenagers are supposed to talk?” And he doesn’t want the filter. He wants, as he keeps saying, something that feels real.
Insider: What’s the significance of the title?
Stew: Someone gave me a comic book edition of Othello, which is awesome because I’m such an idiot that I can’t handle a lot of Shakespearean English. I opened the book, and I happened upon this speech where Othello is explaining to Desdemona’s dad how she fell in love with him and how he wooed her by accident by telling her all these war stories, all these tall tales. And it was so moving, because I knew the character in my play was going to travel, he was going to meet women, and he was going to tell women tales about America and about his travels, and some of these tales would be stretched a bit just like Othello’s war stories were stretched. But what blew me away was when Othello told her these stories, Desdemona would always say, what a strange story, it was passing strange. You know, like beyond strange. And I thought, “Oh wow!” because I knew the play was also going to be about passing — people wearing the psychological masks that people wear, and the whole passing for black, passing for white, passing for poor, passing for rich, slumming, all those kinds of things.
Insider: Your protagonist talks about “black folks passing for black folks.” Is that something you experienced growing up in Los Angeles?
Stew: I did feel that people were conforming to self-imposed stereotypes or to community-imposed stereotypes. It used to be very strange if a black man or a black kid talked like Barack Obama. Now the thing is, I grew up with black people for the most part in my family who talk like that, so that was never a weird thing for me. But for some people, authentic black speech means you sound like you’re from Louisiana. And I’ve always felt — and I think I’m right — that accents are regional, they’re not really racial. My parents are both from the Midwest. Neither of them sound like they’re from the South. And it gets confusing when someone keeps telling you that you don’t sound black. And I’m always like, “You just don’t know enough black people to know what you’re talking about.”
Insider: Did you always hope to turn the musical into a film?
Stew: I was so ready to close, but if I had closed, and after all that work we had done there was no documentation except some wiggly, handheld camera in the back that somebody bootlegged, I would have lost my mind. I mean, it was the biggest thing we’ve ever done. Four years of work. So Spike Lee basically has saved me thousands of dollars in therapy bills!
