(continued)

No matter how cool our producers might think they are, I know good and well they wouldn't have put a dime toward this play if Spring Awakening hadn't won all those TonysYou've said that your show is nothing like that other Broadway juggernaut, Spring Awakening.
It's not meant to be a dis at all, because I am so glad that Spring Awakening exists. But my impression of the music is that it's really still musical theater music. I think our songs could be listened to by someone as just regular music on an album. (You could tell how old I am when I say words like album.) That said, I'll tell anybody: The reason we're on Broadway is because of their success. There's no question about that. No matter how cool our producers might think they are, I know good and well they wouldn't have put a dime toward this play if Spring Awakening hadn't gotten all those good reviews and won all those Tonys.

Your band is called The Negro Problem. Pretty provocative name. Were you trying to grab people's attention?
I guess it was around '95 when we thought of that name, a couple years before we released a record. We were just an irreverent bunch of people. I think we were actually trying to reach out to people who shared our crazy sense of humor. We never thought, "Oh, wow, we're damaging our top-40 possibilities by calling ourselves The Negro Problem"—because we knew from the start that we weren't making top-40 music.

Heidi Rodewald, who started The Negro Problem with you, is your ex-girlfriend. Is it tough to have such a close working relationship with a recent ex?
To be honest, it's been very difficult. We broke up while Passing Strange was in Berkeley and barely had a one-month break from each other before we were living together again and working on the play with our director. We're sort of like a divorced couple that still lives and works together. But our priorities are set: It's all about the play, 24/7. We don't socialize as much right now. It doesn't mean we're not friends or anything—we're collaborators for life—but we try to keep our social lives as separate as possible just to get a break. We've never had that time, that space, that other couples have.

You're doing eight shows a week. Any risk of burnout?
At this stage, it's mostly psychologically tiring. You wake up in the morning knowing, I gotta do this thing. It's different than touring, when you can play a different show at night. When you can get up and play a half-hour song if you feel like it. You can just fuck around. Even though we have a lot of room for improvisation, we have to do the same show every night and there's something taxing about that.

The Wall Street Journal's review of the show was positive, but the writer concluded: "I don't know whether Stew has another story in him." Do you have another story in you, or is this it?
I think I do. I've written a screenplay for Sundance Film Lab and we've got at least two ideas for musicals that we're banging around. Will we ever do something on Broadway again? I kind of doubt it, because I don't think lightning strikes twice. We're up here, we're enjoying our run. If it lasts two more months or two more years, we're cool.

The story is really your own, yet you do have an understudy. How often does he go on? Does the audience feel cheated?
So far, he's never gone on. You're right, so much of it is my story. But I believe that any good actor or good singer—not to say that I'm a good singer—could go up there and do it for two-and-a-half hours. It really can be done without me, easily. A lot of people don't feel that way, but I think that's crazy.

It looks like Passing Strange is in for a very long run. There may come a time when you have to step away from it and pursue other projects. Do you think it will be hard to let go?
No way. If I could give Forest Whitaker guitar lessons right now and have him step into my role, I'd be completely happy. It's like a gig. I think there's gonna be some amazing chubby, 40-ish actor who's going to step into this role and kick ass. I'm convinced of it.

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