Philly Fringe: Rocker-playwright Stew celebrates James Baldwin in 'Notes of a Native Song'
Tirdad Derakhshani Staff
James Baldwin changed Mark Stewart's life. 
Mind you, it didn't come as a thunderbolt or a sudden burst of light. It wasn't a poetic epiphany or a religious crisis.
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James Baldwin changed Mark Stewart's life.

Mind you, it didn't come as a thunderbolt or a sudden burst of light. It wasn't a poetic epiphany or a religious crisis.

It happened slowly, imperceptibly, said the singer-songwriter and playwright better known by his stage name, Stew.

Baldwin's words and his work, his life and ideas, germinated over the years, Stew said in a recent phone interview. It's only in retrospect that he has appreciated how deeply the African American author has shaped his own sensibilities.

Stew shares his lifelong inner conversation with Baldwin in his latest collaborative work for the stage, Notes of a Native Song, which he will perform with a five-piece band Thursday through Sunday at the Wilma Theater. It's part of this year's Fringe Festival.

Not exactly a play or a rock concert, Notes is a narrative song cycle that explores major themes in Baldwin's life. Stew, who wrote the piece with musician Heidi Rodewald, will interlace the songs with commentary, using his banter as connective tissue.

"We start from the idea that the concert is a form of theater . . . a branch of theater," Stew said. "My songs have always told stories, they always have had narratives. This isn't so different. We'll do a song, and I'll talk about it. . . . It's a lot like the banter you always have at a concert, but it's just stylized, it's been honed a bit."

Titled after Baldwin's famous essay Notes From a Native Son, Stew's song cycle is a sequel of sorts to his first work of theater, Passing Strange, which garnered seven Tony nominations in 2008, and won four, including one for Stew's writing.

An account of Stew's formative experiences in Europe, where he moved at 20, Passing Strange is shot through with Baldwin's influence.

Like the author, who famously lived as an expatriate in Paris, Stew became convinced early on that he never could have nurtured his talent as an African American artist had he not left America - at least for a spell.

"Do I consider my years abroad as one of my formative experiences?" Stew asked, repeating the question.

"No, it was the formative experience."

Stew said he could trace back to grade school the inspiration to follow in Baldwin's expatriate footsteps.

"I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in what we called northern South Central Los Angeles. I went to predominantly black schools with mostly black teachers," Stew said.

"My grade school teachers taught us the names of people like James Baldwin and Richard Wright long before we were old enough to read their books, because [the teachers] were trying to explain to us the idea that Europe was this sort of Valhalla or a Jerusalem for black people."

By age 10, Stew associated Baldwin's name with the promise "that there actually are places in the world where . . . black people are treated like human beings."

This stood in sharp relief to Stew's experience of race relations in L.A.

"While we were growing up, all we would see on TV was black people being hosed, or policemen hitting or arresting [black] people for no reason."

The expatriate experience, Stew said, endows artists and thinkers with a new perspective on their native land.

"It's pretty difficult to understand yourself as an American if you never leave," he said. "It teaches you to reflect objectively and critically and to question things Americans take for granted."

Added Stew: "Of course, as Baldwin said at one point, once you become a critical thinker, Americans won't want you around. They'll tell you to 'love it or leave it.' "

Notes of a Native Song also will explore Baldwin's homosexuality, which made him a pariah to many African Americans.

"We talk about how he basically had to write Giovanni's Room [a novel about the love life of an openly gay man] with white characters," said Stew. "He felt he couldn't make the characters gay and black. So we also talk about how his own black community felt repressive to him."

Stew said Notes of a Native Song finally brings to the surface the myriad ways Baldwin has shaped his own sensibilities.

It all dawned on him when his daughter asked for help writing a book report on Baldwin's 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain.

"We read it together, and I was astonished by how many elements of that book were in me already," Stew said.

"I teach now at Sarah Lawrence [College in New York state], and I really do preach that literature can change your life. Not necessarily the second you read it, but it lays there and it lives within you and it grows with you."

tirdad@phillynews.com

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FRINGE FESTIVAL

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Notes of a Native Song

Performed by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, plus 2 p.m. Saturday, at the Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St.