Video: Go Inside Opening Night of STEREOPHONIC on Broadway

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway

Following a critically acclaimed sold-out run off Broadway, David Adjemy's new play Stereophonic has come to Broadway

and we're here on opening night to celebrate with the company. I couldn't have dreamed anything like this

This is way beyond anything I could have dreamed. When you start a play, it's so homemade and so like just something with you at a desk

and to see it expand and magnify, just to see the magnitude of what this is becoming

it's so miraculous to me. I don't actually have words for it

because I can't process it. It worked on so many wonderful projects over the years

What's made this one so special for you? I just think it's just a very unusual piece

It's not really unlike, it's not really like any other piece of theater that I've ever seen before

And in order to make it, it just are so much of the whole creative team

and all the actors. and so it's a real labor of love. You have put an incredible cast together

Not only are they incredible actors, they're also musicians and rock stars

I mean, was it hard to cast? It was hard to cast, because the text demands extraordinary actors

and the music demands real musicality. And so putting together a company

that could satisfy both of those was very challenging, but we did, and we're thrilled

The creative team, like Daniel Locken's a brilliant director. David Adjamy is such a joy to work with and the characters in the script

Justin Craig, the music director, we built a band together with these actors who are geniuses

Like work with a team of seven geniuses, ten geniuses. You're like, this is a privilege of a lifetime

Like Will Brill was freaking playing bass to my song up on stage and I was like that guy going places That kid a real good actor You all took your bow tonight What were you thinking

You can't see anything. The lights are very bright. The lights are much brighter on Broadway

And you're like, wow, I am, this is cool. This is literally like a dream. Like, I don't even know what's happening

You worked on so many beautiful projects. What's made this so special for you

Oh gosh, learning the base, getting to work with David Axe. me getting to work with Will Butler, with Daniel Ockin, with this insane cast

It is blessings on blessings on blessings. I will be honest, this is by far the most difficult experience I have ever had in my life

This character who I love and means the world to me parallels my own life experience in

devastating ways. And so it's been a horror show, but all of that

Also, you know that part in Our Town when Mrs. Soames says, oh, childbirth, I'd forgotten all about that

Wasn't life terrible and wonderful? It's kind of like that. You read the play

What made you say, yes, I have to do this? I mean, it was just this epic mammoth, big sandwich of a play

I was like, I, there is so much in this play. I don't even understand it all

I'm unsure of how this is going to be on its feet

I'm unsure of how I am going to learn how to play the piano

and sing in front of people without passing away. So I think I just saw it

and it felt like I was looking at a mountain, and I was like, well, I have to try and climb it if I can

I have been doing workshops of this play since 2016, and I been with it through its whole journey So it really been a lot of wild ups and downs of like having a mind script where I was like who going to ever produce this play that needs like a functioning

recording studio on stage to then like eventually the music came in. Like Will Butler was attached

but we hadn't heard the songs and I was like, is somebody really going to write songs

that are framed as like going to be for the greatest album of all? Like what a what an impossible

assignment and then the music arrived and I was like it's so good

like he did it somehow. And then, you know, we had some like early attention for the play

and it almost made it out there. And then the pandemic came and squashed everything down

And just so many ups and downs before Playwright's Horizons really took us into their arms and gave the show exactly what it needed

And from there, we've just been able to like launch onto Broadway. What has made this so special for you with working on stereophonic

I think just the piece itself is about a collaboration. and I think this has been the most fruitful, fulfilling collaboration I've been a part of

I mean, baseline material is so rich, and then our director, Daniel Aachen

and the cast of this ensemble has been so, I feel so, I trust them with my life

and they're so giving. You know, we made a band together, and I've never been more close to castmates

because we are bandmates as well. You know, everyone says, oh, you're in a fake band

No, this is a real band, you know. But working with Sarah, especially with Sarah every night

we have such trust, especially now that we're on Broadway, we have such trust in each other because we really know each other

And Giuliana and I have been friends for over 10 years. We did a play together years ago, a two-hander

So we got to know each other then, and to revisit our working relationship and our friendship is amazing

From the second that I read it I identified so deeply with the kind of the genre I guess if you will as like a rock and roll a story of rock and roll band and then also of these humans

and then also just with Simon's journey and the character who I play, Simon and his

struggles with, I mean, it just identified with the character across the board and the story

and the people who are bringing it to life or just, it's exhilarating to do it every single time

we've done it. You guys had a really long rehearsal period, which was like seven weeks, right

It was luxurious. I mean, well, that was for the first round. When we did it at, uh, yeah

it was definitely a truncated process the second time around. But with the first time around

yeah, I mean, there was so much to learn. All the musicians, aside from Chris Stack, who plays

the drums, he was basically drumming at drummer level. Everybody else had to kind of figure it out

to some degree or another how to be a rock star and play their instruments

There was a lot of sound tech to figure out on stage and off

I had to learn how to pretend to fool people into thinking that I knew what the hell I was doing

But also, there's just, there's, there's microphones everywhere. There's a whole sound isolation booth that's a part of the stage

There's all kinds of stuff we had to figure out tech-wise. So yeah

And also the script is so demanding. It's 220-something pages. It's really technically precise in terms of overlaps and rhythm

So, yeah, it's all time that we needed and time we well used

And really we all enjoyed, too. I mean, a lot of hard work, but really a joy when you're working on something this good