‘Stereophonic’ won Best Play at the Tony Awards. The playwright is a University of Iowa alum

A University of Iowa alum’s record-breaking play won several awards at the 77^th annual Tony Awards Sunday night.

David Adjmi is the playwright behind the 13-time Tony-nominated play “Stereophonic.” It received the most nominations of any play in Tony history. It won five awards, including Best Play, when the Tonys aired on June 16 on CBS.

“This almost didn’t happen,” Adjmi said in his acceptance speech. “This play took me 11 years to manifest in a production and it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Adam Greenfield and Playwrights Horizons, the off-Broadway theater that gave us a world-class production that we basically transferred to the Broadway stage.”

Adjmi thanked his friends for both emotional and financial help, including for giving him a place to live for “seven years so that I could write this play.”

“It’s really hard to make a career in the arts,” Adjmi said. “We need to fund the arts in America. It is the hallmark of a civilized society.”

“Stereophonic” follows an up-and-coming rock band recording a new album “on the cusp of superstardom,” but whether that pressure breaks them up or inspires their breakthrough is left for audiences to discover, according to Playwrights Horizons.

Adjmi attended the Iowa Playwrights Workshop from 1998 to 2001, University of Iowa public relations manager Steve Schmadeke said in an email to the Des Moines Register.

He wrote “Strange Attractors” during this time, which premiered at the Empty Space Theatre in Seattle, according to Playbill. He has also written “Marie Antoinette” and “The Evildoers.”

Adjmi was admitted to Juilliard’s American Playwrights Program, Schmadeke said, and other honors include being awarded a Mellon Foundation grant to a Guggenheim Fellowship, according to Adjmi’s website.

He authored a memoir, “Lot Six,” published in 2020.

What was David Adjmi’s time at the University of Iowa like?

Art Borreca, co-head of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, recalled some of Adjmi’s time at Iowa with the Register in a phone interview.

Borreca had started running the MFA playwriting program, and Adjmi was part of the very first class Borreca was responsible for admitting.

Borreca recalled reading the play Adjmi submitted for admission.

“The play that he submitted was really, really strong,” Borreca said. “It clearly had a strong sense of voice and sense of theater, and the application rose right to the top. So, we admitted him and recruited him a little bit. I remember that there was another program that very much wanted him, but he liked our program in particular, and ended up coming here.”

Borreca saw Adjmi’s first drafts as part of a course in the program, and his work was more advanced than what one would expect from a first draft, Borreca said.

“On top of being very talented, he had a really strong academic background, was always very smart and very knowledgeable about the theater and about literature in general, and that came across both in the workshop and in the other classes,” Borreca said.

During the time Adjmi was enrolled in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, work submitted to the New Play Festival had the chance to be selected for the main stage season the following year, Borreca explained.

One of Adjmi’s plays was selected for the main stage season, an “indication of how strong his work was,” Borreca said.

Adjmi’s success benefits the Iowa Playwrights Workshop by drawing in students who are considering where to apply, Borreca explained. It also affirms the “quality of the writers that come here,” he said.

Were there other Tony-winning shows with Iowa ties?

Des Moines Performing Arts invested in five of the Tony-nominated shows as part of the Independent Presenters Network, a consortium of 40 Broadway presenters, theaters and performing arts centers, according to a news release from DMPA in April.

Those shows are “The Outsiders,” “Here Lies Live,” “The Notebook,” “Gutenberg! The Musical!” and “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”

“The Outsiders” won Best Musical at the Tonys. It also won for:

• Best Direction of a Musical, Danya Taymor — “The Outsiders”
• Best Lighting Design in a Musical, Brian MacDevitt and Hana S. Kim — “The Outsiders”
• Best Sound Design of a Musical, Cody Spencer — “The Outsiders”

Paris Barraza is a trending and general assignment reporter at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at pbarraza@registermedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.