Where’s Stew?

ALTHOUGH I much enjoyed Mike Boehm’s fine article [“Camp Dramaturge,” Aug. 21], I find myself astonished that there was not a single mention of Stew, onetime leader of L.A. popmeisters the Negro Problem and now a budding playwright/screenwriter, whose unprecedented second year in a row was spent this summer at the Sundance Theatre Lab working on his new musical “Passing Strange,” a brilliant piece that will have its official debut at Berkeley Rep in September 2006, followed by a run at the Public Theater in New York City in 2007.

That the L.A. Times would run such an extensive article on the Sundance scene and leave out one of the greatest creative artists this city has ever produced (and whose best work is still ahead of him) leaves one flabbergasted. A prophet is not without honor.

BARRY SMOLIN

Los Angeles

Smolin is the host-producer of “The Music Never Stops” on KPFK-FM (90.7)