Stereophonica new Broadway play with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, charts the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.
Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic
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Stereophonica new Broadway play with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, charts the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.
Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic
Stereophonica new Broadway play with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, charts the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.
The fictional five-member band, at first glance, looks a lot like Fleetwood Mac: it’s made up of two couples, one American, one British, and they bicker and break up while recording the record.
But, for the show’s creative team, it’s a hyper-realistic look at the costs and glories of creating art.
“There are iconographic elements that I stole from Fleetwood Mac,” said playwright David Adjmi, “but I stole other things, too.”
He did extensive research into 1970s bands and recording studios of the era and wrote the piece in a documentary style.
“We’ll ask you to take a look,” Adjmi said. “And that’s what creates this kind of strange, exciting feeling for the audience and the feeling that you’re getting something really, really intimate.”
The set for Stereophonic is a working recording studio – from the ruined mixing console to the 24-track tape recorder to the large glass windows overlooking a soundproof room where musicians play and listen through their headphones. The vintage equipment is so real that director Daniel Aukin said, “I recently learned that the song ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ was recorded on it.”
For three hours, the public Really got to know the group and the sound engineers. They see the musicians hanging out, eating junk food, rolling joints, talking about movies and bickering.
Adjmi said he started writing Stereophonic at a time when he felt discouraged by theater and considered quitting. The battles the characters have with each other are the internal battles he was fighting with himself.
“Why am I doing this?” he said he wondered. “I shouldn’t do this. It’s terrible. It’s not worth it. No, it East it’s worth it. It’s beautiful. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”
To help the band feel like a band, Will Butler had them open for him in Brooklyn.
Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic
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To help the band feel like a band, Will Butler had them open for him in Brooklyn.
Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic
Transforming actors into musicians
Before he had written a word, Adjmi met at a dinner with Will Butler, of the band Arcade Fire, to see if he would write music for the play. Butler said he was excited when he learned that the show would have music being created.
“And you would hear a demo, and then you would hear them mixing the vocals and you would hear fragments of it. And the fragments are so convincing, and you want more, but you can’t have more,” he said . said. “And then, this initial idea was so rich that I said to myself: ‘I would love to do that!’”
But to make Adjmi’s idea a reality, they had to turn actors with certain musical abilities, who could turn nuanced characters into a group of credible musicians. And it turned out to be complicated.
“It was a long process to find the right balance of people,” said director Daniel Aukin.
“We had to have actors that you would want to cast in a Chekhov play, and we had to have actors who had enough musicality that we could project forward, with support, so that they could get to where we needed them to succeed.”
While Chris Stack, the drummer, was already a solid player, the rest of the cast took music lessons before rehearsals, said Will Brill, who plays the band’s bassist.
“I learned to play really badly right before I started rehearsals,” he said. “And, really, I mean, I did a lot of catching up during rehearsals. Like, I hadn’t played a note before this thing!”
Butler said it was a leap of faith, hoping these five actors could become a group. During the first few weeks, much of the rehearsal process took place in group rehearsals rather than actor rehearsals. Then Butler asked the quintet to open for him at a Brooklyn club.
“And they were great and they learned so much,” he said, “and they even got to the point where they had to stand on stage in front of people before they played a note. It taught them so much of what being a band is like, it taught them the energy they bring to the studio.”
Andrew R. Butler and Eli Gelb, as sound engineers, use realistic-looking equipment.
Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic
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The piece traces the group’s process of creating an album over more than a year.
Brill said he was moved by the play’s final scene, which simply shows the sound engineer alone on stage, playing with the faders of this vintage recording console.
“There’s this glass box above his head that’s sort of like a thought bubble,” the actor said, “and it’s like the artist is sitting alone at his table and ‘we asked ourselves: ‘Did he dream it all?’ Did this ever happen? Was David (Adjmi) sitting alone at his table with all his demons and his gods? It’s very, very moving for me.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital versions of this story.
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