`Passing Strange' wants to deliver `the Real'
Tony-winning hit is back in Berkeley, where it all started
Shotgun Players' new production of “Passing Strange” is now playing just across town from where the musical first premiered in 2006 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The show has had quite a journey along the way to its homecoming.
The original production, including former Bay Area luminaries such as Colman Domingo and Eisa Davis, went on to offBroadway and Broadway runs and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning one for best book of a musical. Its closing night performance on Broadway became a 2019 Spike Lee film.
Written by rock singer-songwriter Stew, the show itself is about a long journey of self-discovery. The young African American protagonist, called the Youth, is on a never-ending quest for “the Real,” something authentic in life, taking him from a middle-class life in South Central Los Angeles to wild adventures of sex, drugs, philosophy and art in Amsterdam and Berlin.
“You cannot tell this story without Blackness, but I also think one of the main reasons I watch this show is because it's a coming of age about an artist,” says William Thomas Hodgson, who's directing the Shotgun Players revival. “That hero's journey specifically about art, where we're all commodifying a bit of our soul, is something we're all dealing with. We've all missed someone dear to us, we missed their funeral because we had a show that Friday.”
The music by Heidi Rodewald and Stew is a wild mix of styles rooted in rock but including bits of other genres such as gospel, punk and cabaret. Stew played the singing Narrator in the original production, alongside Rodewald in the onstage band.
Hodgson, who is co-artistic director of the Oakland Theater Project, saw the original production basically accidentally.
“I did not know what the Berkeley Rep was, but as a 19-year-old, I came to Berkeley and could not get into a bar,” he says. “I walked by the theater and the door is open and I'm watching this musical, and I was like, `What is this? Why are there Black people on stage?' I knew I liked theater, but I had never acknowledged to myself or publicly that I did. I went into that show and just watched it. And they ended up kicking me out because I did not have a ticket. I was standing in the back of this theater and I saw like 20 minutes of it. And in the next month I auditioned for acting school. It changed my trajectory.”
Like that original production, Shotgun's seven-person cast is entirely Black performers, most of whom play a multitude of roles.
“And the rooms are not entirely Black, but we do have Black technicians, Black stage managers, Black musicians, Black designers,” Hodgson adds. “That is an experience I really have rarely had, so there's a lot of joy and love for me around that.”
Rolanda D. Bell, who plays the Mother in the show, says, “She's like every single mother out here raising their children and just praying for them every time they walk out the door that they make the right decisions in life and that it helps them and doesn't hurt them. She's living her life through him in a sense and doesn't understand why he wants to go this route. But she also battles with her own things back at home while he's trying to find himself doing what he loves and wants to grab him and tell him, `Hey, son, your family's important, just as much as your dream. Love is more real than a dream.' ”
“I believe the core of the story is that relationship between the son and his mother,” attests Albert Hodge, who plays the Narrator. “He's looking for the real experience. He's just constantly looking for something more. But that connection to home is always there, whether he acknowledges it or not.”
For Devin Cunningham, who plays the Youth, the most important thing about the show is that “Black people do not exist in a monolith,” he says. “You're not one particular type of way of being. And that includes our artistry, our expression, how we move about space. That is my biggest thing, that you see Black artists and a Black nomad who says, `I want to explore and see what else is out there.' We can go anywhere. We can explore anything. And we shouldn't have to consider our color for it.”
“That is the biggest takeaway that I want people to take,” Cunningham says. “The right to explore self, the right to explore the world.”