Stew Stewart

Undergraduate Discipline

Theatre

Graduate Program

MFA Theatre Program

As a Tony Award- and two-time Obie Award-winning playwright/co-composer of the ground-breaking musical Passing Strange, critically acclaimed singer/songwriter and veteran of multiple dive-bar stages, Stewart’s classes are hothouses of multi-disciplinary, self-challenging experimentation that encourage celebratory transformation via myth-making and song. His courses are equally informed by the spontaneous immediacy of rock-club survival tactics and the human grandeur of theatre. As an instructor, he strives to demystify the songwriting process while simultaneously inviting students to create myths out of their truths so that those truths might reach deeper and shine brighter. Stewart's works: 2019—“Maybe There's Black People in Fort Greene,” composed for Spike Lee’s TV show, She’s Gotta Have It. 2018—“A Klown With the Nuclear Code,” composed for Spike Lee’s TV show,She’s Gotta Have It. 2017—“Resisting My Resistance to the Resistance," Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2016—“Mosquito Net” (NYUAD Arts Center, Abu Dhabi). 2015—“Notes of a Native Song," commissioned by Harlem Stage and performed worldwide. 2015—“Wagner, Max!!! Wagner!!!,” Kennedy Center. 2013—“Chicago Omnibus,” commissioned by and debuted at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 2012—Southern California Analog," UCLA. 2010—“Brooklyn Omnibus," Brooklyn Academy of Music. 2010—“Making It,” St Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn. 2009—Spike Lee’s Passing Strange (film) 2008—Passing Strange, Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, Broadway. 2007—Passing Strange, Obie Award for Best New Theater Piece and Best Ensemble, Public Theater. 2006—Passing Strange, world premiere, Berkeley Repertory. Stew & the Negro Problem have released 12 critically acclaimed albums between 1997 and the present. Stewart is the composer of “Gary Come Home,” of SpongeBob SquarePants fame—which, honestly, is all anyone cares about anyway. SLC, 2022–

MFA Theatre

Theatre