Wonderful Guise

"Pathetic Eurocentric Negro!" That's how Stew, an old pal of mine from my Berlin days begins an account of his first trip ever to Africa. He's working as one of the creative advisers for a program in Kenya that coaches upcoming African theater people. He's also agreed to share his experiences by posting regularly on the New York Times' ArtsBeat Blog. Stew was the lead guitarist of a good-time band we had in Berlin called 'The Wonderful Guise'. Tony Millionaire was also a member of the group. Anyway, it's good to see Stew maintaining the spirit of those free-for-all wild times in passages like this:

The workshop I'm giving on Manda will probably consist of a song by song analysis of the Rolling Stones 1966 release "Between the Buttons" which I'll compare and contrast with "King Lear," even though I've never read "King Lear" and I'm almost certain absolutely no connection between the two works actually exists. But Sundance can handle this sort of thing.

You can read the whole post here...

So I'm listening to NPR's 'All Things Considered' and they start talking about an old pal of mine from my days in Berlin, Stew. The segment is called, "Wondrous 'Strange': Spike Lee Makes A Musical" and it's about how Spike Lee produced a film version of Stew's musical 'Passing Strange' which won a Tony last year (see my write-up).

The musical is about Stew's experiences growing up in L.A. and then going to Amsterdam and Berlin. Since that's when I knew him (we were in the same group called the 'Wonderful Guise'), I look forward to seeing the film. Below is the trailer.