The play Stereophonic made history by receiving 13 Tony Award nominations, the most ever for a non-musical production.
Written by David Azimi with music by Will Butler, the story centres on the band, locked in a studio for a year between 1976 and 1977, as they struggle to create an epic album whilst dealing with simmering rivalries and resentments.
Butler, a former member of the band Arcade Fire, began collaborating with Azimi in 2014, long before any cast members had been cast or a script developed.
“My attitude when I came in was, ‘This is going to be fun,'” Butler said.
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Finding five actors who could convincingly become a band was another challenge: Only Chris Stack, who plays drummer Simon, had any previous band experience; Sarah Pidgeon and Julianna Canfield, who play Diana and Holly, had never sung professionally.
Canfield believes the whole group was cast because he thought Butler and Azimi could play the roles and then “prayed that we could do a musical career together.”
The actors rehearsed for hours every day. Some even took lessons; Tom Pesinka, who plays the lead guitarist, said he had only ever played “terrible guitar” before.
“My hands always shake. They don’t shake anymore, but they used to shake a lot when I was off-Broadway,” Pesinka said.
“He played the song he played in his audition and he had the audience crying,” co-star Eli Gelb added. “So my hands were shaking and my heart was shaking.”
Gelb and Andrew R. Butler play studio engineers trying to keep the peace and get the record done as the creative process turns to chaos for the fictional band.
Will Brill, who plays bassist Reg, deals with both sobriety and divorce in the film. Brill said his character’s journey mirrors his own life in “pretty intense” ways. “It was a really fun weekend with my therapist trying to figure that out,” he said.
Despite the similarities, the show’s creators insist the story is not based on Fleetwood Mac.
In “Stereophonic,” the group has no name, but the performers came up with one themselves, which they did not reveal.
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