The Broadway show Stereophonic dominated the 77th Tony Awards, bringing home five honors, including Best Play and Best Direction of a play. In all, Stereophonic went into the evening with 13 nominations in 10 categories (a record for a non-musical play).
But it’s sort of a miracle that the play even exists.
Stereophonic took collaborators David Adjmi (book), Will Butler (music and lyrics), and Daniel Aukin (director) over 10 years to create.
“There was lots of forward momentum,” says Aukin, “And then there was lots of backward momentum, and there was a lot of hopelessness.”
In addition to Best Play for Adjmi and Direction of a Play for Aukin, Stereophonic netted Tonys for Featured Actor for Will Brill, Sound Design for Ryan Rumery, and Scenic Design for David Zinn.
Stereophonic mines the agony and ecstasy of the creative process by focusing on an up-and-coming rock band recording a new album in the mid-1970s (it’s not Fleetwood Mac, but it’s also not not Fleetwood Mac). The pressures threaten to trigger either a breakup — or a breakthrough.
For its creators, a long development period and the Covid years were bumps in the road, but ultimately, those delays let them breathe a complete vision into life — a metaphor Adjmi often evokes to explain their process...READ MORE