Tony Award-winning playwright, composer, performer, and Harvard University professor Stew (Passing Strange, Notes of a Native Song) premieres HIGH SUBSTITUTE FOR THE HEAD LECTURER. The second in his series of “black super-hero free-constructions,” Stew works through Amiri Baraka’s, and Leroi Jones’, twin influences on his life and art. Baraka, previously known as Leroi Jones, was a legendary writer and founder of the Black Arts Movement. In the spirit of Stew’s critically acclaimed Notes of a Native Song, the musical meditation on James Baldwin, also commissioned by Harlem Stage, HIGH SUBSTITUTE will irreverently transmit troubadour songs scribbled on and about the life trail blazed by Baraka Jones.
