Passing Strange (2009) Directed By Spike Lee

Passing Strange (2009)
Directed By Spike Lee

A young black musician travels on a picaresque journey to rebel against his mother and his upbringing in a church-going, middle-class, late 1970s South Central Los Angeles neighborhood in order to find "the real". He finds new experiences in promiscuous Amsterdam, with its easy access to drugs and sex, and in artistic, chaotic, political Berlin, where he struggles with ethics and integrity when he misrepresents his background as poor to get ahead. Along with his "passing" from place to place and from lover to lover, the young musician moves through a number of musical styles from a background of gospel to punk, and then blues, jazz, and rock. He then finally returns home.

Passing Strange is a musical with lyrics and book by Stew and music and orchestrations by Stew and Heidi Rodewald.

The musical was developed at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in 2004 and 2005, one of the only works ever to be invited back for a second round of development.[1] It had productions in Berkeley, California and off-Broadway before opening on Broadway in 2008.

The title passing strange come from Shakespeare's 1603 play Othello, the Moor of Venice. In the play, the character, Othello, utters the following lines:

    My story being done,
    She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
    She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange ;
    'Twas pitiful. 'twas wondrous pitiful,
    She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
    That heaven had made her such a man.

        —Othello, the Moor of Venice, act 1, scene 3, lines 158–163