The Brooklyn Rail

Stereophonic is a work of sepia-tinged realism—set inside the wood-paneled walls of a 1970s recording studio, the new play with music (written by David Adjmi, directed by Daniel Aukin, and composed by Arcade Fire alum Will Butler) depicts an incestuous rock quintet who wend their way from tedium to epiphany as they labor on a forthcoming make-or-break LP. The show intimately captures the minutiae of its central band’s rehearsals, so watching the cast rehearse these rehearsals, as I did a few weeks ago to prepare for this conversation, was a certifiably trippy experience.

“Can you take it a bit faster?” a cast member says to his scene partners onstage.

“Great,” directs Aukin from the audience. “Can you take that line a bit faster?”

You almost expect God herself to call, “Hold!” After exiting the nested rehearsal rooms, I caught up with Adjmi, Aukin and Butler to discuss their ode to creative collaboration, which plays through November 19 at Playwrights Horizons.

Lily Goldberg (Rail): Well, this was really fun to watch—it’s so weird to see a rehearsal of a rehearsal. What’s it like to direct characters who are collaborating in real time?

Daniel Aukin: What David has written is in conversation with documentary. I think it’s also in conversation with certain Robert Altman films. I’m really into the films of Maurice Pialat, who shares some of those qualities. It’s a performance of people not performing, but making something.

David Adjmi: There really isn’t this kind of a play, right? Like, I don’t know this format.

Aukin: The only play that touches on something like this that I know of is Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. It does feel like one of those ideas that’s so theatrical, the location of the recording studio. It seemed obvious. Like, why hasn’t anybody done this? Actually, there are very good reasons why. [Laughs]

Rail: Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back came out after your first premiere was postponed. That was such a big phenomenon in terms of showing the in-process footage of creativity—I was curious if that influenced any of the work you’ve been doing.

Adjmi: It didn’t influence me, but I didn’t watch it when it came out because it made me anxious.

Aukin: For me, it was affirming. The conversations between band members in Get Back so echo things that are in this play.

Rail: I noticed that the play takes place in 1976, the US Bicentennial. I was curious if you thought about collaboration on a national scale at all during this formative moment of American democracy.

Adjmi: Yes. [Laughter] I was thinking: how do we function? How do disparate elements within a nation function together, and how do we stay alive? I wouldn’t call this play an allegory. But I would say that was not an accident.

Will Butler: And it is before Reagan—there is something about the “before Reagan-ness” of it.

Adjmi: The play is encroaching towards the eighties. My big thing in the play is like first they have this big group bag of cocaine and then suddenly they start using vials. [Laughter] The eighties are coming. The eighties are all about not collaborating. They’re about decimating your opposition.

Rail: Have you been in bands before?

Aukin: School orchestra.

Adjmi: I just had piano lessons when I was little.

Rail: Interesting. I was curious what the research process was like for this play.

Adjmi: It was really hard. You watch snippets of documentaries and graft the DNA of what you learned into what you’re making.

Aukin: And you talked to people who were in recording studios at that time.

Adjmi: I did. We talked to John Kilgore, who’s a very well-known sound engineer and producer in the seventies. I didn’t want it to be sloppy or fake. Justin Craig [music director] and Will have been very diligent with making sure that everything feels above board. There’s not one technical thing in here that wouldn’t have been true to the period.

Rail: I noticed that moments of artistic breakthrough for the band seem to happen after emotionally fraught moments. It reminded me of the lore about Merry Clayton and her “Gimme Shelter” background vocals.

Adjmi: I do think there’s something about alchemy in this play. Something about people learning how to transmute pain into stuff and to not be defeated by it. Whether it’s a cliché or not, that’s the gift that artists get.

Rail: In the exchange where the character Holly is discussing Last Tango in Paris, for example, there’s this hovering idea that pushing the limit is how you create amazing art. I was curious about how that attitude has played out in the theater over the last couple decades.

Adjmi: It’s really thorny for me. I came of age in the nineties, and it was incredibly rogue as a period to be making theater. But I kind of liked it, the same way that I liked the pre-sanitized Times Square. I miss the feeling of danger a little bit, even though clearly we can’t make norms that put people in danger. When we were coming up, the processes felt more feral and crazy, but the art seemed crazier, too.

Aukin: For better and worse.

Adjmi: For better and worse.

Rail: You’ve talked about how the dramatic tension in the show arises from technological constraints—like, if the band records too many takes, they run out of tape. Obviously that’s different in 2023.

Butler: There’s definitely an inverse relationship between money and technology. Nowadays, there’s infinite technology and no money for anything in theater or music. But in this play, they’ve got more money than Pink Floyd, but only twenty-four tracks. So there’s a materialist thing there. I don’t know, we’re so fricking fortunate that Playwrights Horizons built us a studio inside of the theater.

Aukin: This theater got behind this play in a way that’s really, really unusual. In the long history of getting this play off, we’ve had producers say, “Could they just mime their instruments? Do you really need a soundproof room?” Having to explain to them why that might be integral to the show was not fun.

Rail: Is the soundboard fully equipped?

Aukin: In the setup we have, I think you could record an album if you wanted to.

Rail: Will, what was it like writing the music for this show as opposed to music for your own projects?

Butler: The only soundtrack I’ve done is for the Spike Jonze movie Her. It’s a very comparable process; you’re making your own work, but there’s directorial vision. It takes a certain amount of empathy with your collaborators and the people on the screen and the characters who are singing the songs. It does take a lot of spiritual work.

Rail: I got to hear the song “Masquerade,” and right when I walked in, they were doing Diana’s big number, which was awesome. Is there going to be a cast recording? It’s great music.

Butler: Yeah, God willing. You really want people to walk in blind. You know this is a band that has an album in the Top 40 and a song in the Top 10 in 1976; that puts you in a frame of mind. If you had the actual document when you went in, you’re like, “I can’t wait to hear the song!” instead of asking, "What will the universe bring me?" But obviously, yes, we’ll make a cast recording. It’ll be really great.

Rail: Are all the company members musicians as well, or did some of them learn to play for this?

Aukin: I’m just going to say they’re all musicians now. [Laughter]