Stereophonic, a new play on Broadway with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, tracks the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.

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Stereophonic, a new play on Broadway with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, tracks the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.

Julieta Cervantes/Stereophonic

Stereophonic, a new play on Broadway with music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, tracks the volatile creation of a rock and roll album over the course of a year in the 1970s.

The fictional five-member band, on the surface, looks a lot like Fleetwood Mac – it has two couples, one American, one British, and they squabble and break up as they make the record.

But, for the show’s creative team, it is a hyper realistic look at the costs and glories of making art.

“There are iconographic elements that I stole from Fleetwood Mac,” said playwright David Adjmi, “but I also stole from other things.”

He did a lot of research on bands of the 1970s and recording studios of the time and has written the play in a documentary style.

“We’re going to ask you to peek in,” Adjmi said. “And that’s what creates this kind of weird, titillating 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 banged-up mixing console to the 24-track tape machine to the big glass windows looking into a soundproof room where the musicians play and listen on their headphones. The vintage equipment is so real that director Daniel Aukin said, “I’ve learned recently that the song ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ was recorded on it.”

Over the course of three hours, the audience really gets to know the band and the engineers. They see the musicians hanging out, eating junk food, rolling joints, talking about movies, and squabbling.

Adjmi said he began writing Stereophonic at a point when he was feeling discouraged with theater and thought about quitting. The fights the characters are having with each other are the internal fights he was having with himself.

“Why am I doing this?” he said he asked himself. “I shouldn’t be doing this. This is terrible. It’s not worth it. No, it is worth it. It’s beautiful. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

To help the group feel like a band, Will Butler had them open for him in Brooklyn.

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To help the group feel like a band, Will Butler had them open for him in Brooklyn.

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Turning actors into musicians

Before he had written a word, Adjmi got together in a diner with Will Butler, of the band Arcade Fire, to see if he’d write music for the play. Butler said he got excited as he learned that in the show, the music would be in the process of being created.

“And you’d hear a demo and then you’d hear them mixing in the vocals and you’d hear fragments of it. And the fragments are so compelling, and you want more, but you can’t have more,” he said. “And then, just that initial idea was so rich, I was like, ‘I would love to do this!’”

But in order to pull off Adjmi’s idea, they had to turn actors with some musical ability who could pull off nuanced characters into a believable group of musicians. And that proved complicated.

“It was a long process to find the right balance of people,” said director Daniel Aukin.

“We had to have actors who you would want to cast in a Chekhov play, and we had to have actors who had enough musicality that we could project forward, given support, that they could get to where we needed them to be to pull it off.”

While Chris Stack, cast as the drummer, was already a solid player, the rest of the cast took music lessons before rehearsal, said Will Brill, who plays the band’s bass player.

“I learned to play really badly right before we started rehearsals,” he said. “And, really, I mean, did a lot of catching up during rehearsals. Like, I didn’t play a note before this thing!”

Butler said it was a leap of faith, hoping these five actors could become a band. For the first few weeks, much of the rehearsal process was spent in band rehearsals, rather than acting rehearsals. Then, Butler asked the quintet to open for him at a club in Brooklyn.

“And they were great and they learned so much,” he said, “and even just getting to the point where they had to stand on a stage in front of people, before they played a note. Like, that taught them so much of what a being a band is like, that taught them the energy that they’re bringing to the studio.”

Andrew R. Butler and Eli Gelb as sound engineers use realistic-seeming equipment.

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The play tracks the band’s process of creating an album for over a year.

Brill said he’s moved by the final scene of the play, which is just the engineer onstage alone, playing with the faders of that vintage recording console.

“There is this glass box above his head that sort of looks like a thought bubble in some way,” said the actor, “and it’s as though the artist is sitting alone at his table and you wonder, like, ‘Did he dream all this? Did it ever exist? Was this David [Adjmi] sitting alone at his table with all of his demons and gods?’ It’s very, very moving to me.”

Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital versions of this story.

VPM; Connecticut Public Radio; NCPR; WWNO; OPB; Colorado Public Radio

VPM; Connecticut Public Radio; NCPR; WWNO; OPB; Colorado Public Radio

Enjoy the spring bloom, get outside, listen to a new podcast! The NPR One team has gathered a few returning favorites as well as some fresh releases from across public media.

The podcast episode descriptions below are from podcast webpages and have been edited for brevity and clarity.

NPR Explains… — NPR

Sea Change — WWNO & WRKF

Sea Change is back with a brand new season. And this time, the stakes are even higher. We launch new investigations, travel around the world, and look at how a sea change is underway to solve some of our biggest problems. Come with us to investigate and celebrate life on our changing coasts. Every two weeks, we bring you stories that illuminate, inspire, and sometimes enrage, as we dive deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. We have a lot to save, and we have a lot of solutions. It’s time to talk about a Sea Change.

Listen to “All Gassed Up, Part 1: The Carbon Coast.”

Lost Patients — KUOW

Imagine a sprawling house in which every room, doorway, and hall passage was designed by a different architect. Doorways don’t connect. Staircases lead to nowhere. Rooms are cut off from each other. That’s how reporter Will James describes our complicated system for treating people with severe mental illness – a system that, almost by design, loses patients with psychosis to an endless loop between the streets, jail, clinics, courts and a shrinking number of hospital beds. Lost Patients is a deeply-reported, six-part docuseries examining the difficulties of treating serious mental illness through the lens of one city’s past, present and future. With real-life testimonials from patients, families, and professionals on the front lines, Lost Patients provides a real, solutions-oriented look at how we got stuck here…and what we might do to break free.

Listen to part one, “Churn.”

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The Modern West — Wyoming Public Media

Exactly 100 years to the day after a woman named Eleanor Davis became the first recorded woman to ever climb the Grand Teton – a nearly 14,000 foot-tall mountain that’s the namesake for Grand Teton National Park – an all-female group of climbers is summiting the peak to celebrate her legacy. Hannah Habermann tagged along for the adventure.

Start listening to part one of High Altitude Tales, “Courage is a Muscle.”

Throughline — NPR

How did we get here? That’s the driving question behind Throughline’s series, Origins of the Middle East Conflict. The series explores Hamas’ roots in early Islamist movements, the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in their adoption of suicide bombing and other violent strategies, the role the Palestine Liberation Organization played, how both Intifadas moved the needle, and the roles of Israeli, Palestinian, and US politics in bringing us to the moment we’re in today.

Listen to “The Rise of the Right Wing in Israel.”

¿Quién Are We? — Colorado Public Radio

Get ready for a new season of ¿Quién Are We?, a podcast about being Latinx, Hispanic, Chicana – or however you identify – and the beautiful things that make us who we are. Host and journalist May Ortega is back with more everyday stories of incredible people who are exploring their heritage through their personal passions. You’ll hear from an artist, an anthropologist and a game-maker. You’ll hear about the relationship between two enemies, turned lovers and the connection between a father and son. Most importantly, you’ll hear yourself in these stories.

Start listening to “The Therapist.”

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Track Change — VPM

As four men are held in a Virginia jail, they record an album to chronicle their efforts to break free from an oppressive cycle of addiction and incarceration. In each music-infused episode of this documentary series, host and trailblazing hip-hop artist Speech Thomas meets a musician at a crossroads in their uphill struggle for freedom, learns what brought them to this inflection point, and helps them record a song that captures this critical moment in their life. From soulful country to fiery hip-hop and haunting R&B, this music affirms the lives of people who are written off by society. And amidst a re-entry crisis afflicting millions of Americans every year, these intimate stories from behind the walls of a local jail ask: What does it take to rebuild a life after incarceration?

Listen to episode 1, “I Wrote This to Inspire.”

Salmon Wars — OPB

Salmon Wars tells the story of salmon in the Northwest in a way you haven’t heard before – through the voices of one Yakama Nation family who have been fighting for salmon for generations. We dig in to uncover who is to blame for the salmon vanishing, what can be done before it’s too late and why their disappearance impacts all of us…

Listen to “Ep 1: The Family.”

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Unforgotten: Connecticut’s Hidden History of Slavery — Connecticut Public Radio

When we think of slavery in the United States, we don’t usually think of the North. But enslaving people was legal in Connecticut for more than 200 years and did not officially end until 1848. In our first episode, Reporter/Producer Diane Orson and Editorial Consultant and Curator Frank Mitchell dive into complicated questions: Who owns this history? Who should present it? In what ways was this history hidden? There’s a deeply-rooted perception that the North was home to the “good guys,” the abolitionists. The truth is far different. Hear from people who are shedding light on this history and why it matters.

Listen to “Episode 1: Slavery has deep roots in New England.”

The Howl — NCPR

True stories. No notes. That’s the HOWL Podcast. Recorded live on stages in the upper reaches of Northern New York, the HOWL features stories about being hunted by Bigfoot, cooking on car engines, and taking your dog’s medication. Host Ethan Shantie pairs tales from his time as a writer, punk musician, and life-long New Yorker with stories from everyday people in communities all over New York’s “North Country.” In the latest and final episode of season two, Ethan shares the story of his bootlegging family, and live storyteller, Olivia, tells us about the world of underground jelly wrestling.

Listen to “I just found out my great grandparents were bootleggers.”

NPR’s Jessica Green and Jack Mitchell curated and produced this piece.

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