Rock musical Passing Strange follows a nameless middle-class black youth who turns his back on church and family to embark on an artistic, smoky journey to Europe, like James Baldwin and Josephine Baker before him. Nigel Richards stars as the youth in this long overdue local premiere of the Tony-winning musical. This evening’s performance is followed by a conversation, Big In Europe: Music and the African-American Experience, about how European audiences have traditionally been more willing than Americans to accept black American artists.
photo by Maggie Hall