AILSA CHANG, HOST:
"Stereophonic" is a new Broadway play with music by Arcade Fire's Will Butler. It tracks the volatile creation of a rock 'n' 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, but for the show's creative team, it's a hyperrealistic look at the costs and glories of making art. Jeff Lunden reports.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELI GELB: (As Grover) Floor, Tom?
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUM BEATING)
GELB: (As Grover) Great. I think we're ready for the band.
LUNDEN: And over the course of the next three hours, the audience really gets to know the band and the engineers. Playwright David Adjmi says he wrote "Stereophonic" in a documentary style.
DAVID ADJMI: We're going to ask you to peek in. 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.
LUNDEN: So the audience sees the musicians hanging out, eating junk food, rolling joints, talking about movies, and we hear them squabble.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH PIDGEON: (As Diana) You sold my guitar.
TOM PECINKA: (As Peter) OK, that was seven years ago.
PIDGEON: (As Diana) The guitar that took me months and months to save for.
PECINKA: (As Peter) The guitar you used literally once...
PIDGEON: (As Diana) But that wasn't right.
PECINKA: (As Peter) ...Because you didn't do the work.
LUNDEN: David Adjmi says 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.
ADJMI: Why am I doing this? 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL BUTLER'S "MASQUERADE")
LUNDEN: Before he had written a word, David Adjmi got together with Will Butler of Arcade Fire to see if he'd write music for the play, and Butler got excited as he heard more about the idea for the show.
WILL BUTLER: That music would be in process, and you'd hear a demo, and then you'd hear them mixing 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. And then just that initial idea was so rich, I was like, I would love to do this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MASQUERADE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) I've been hearing so long that that's where you have gone, so I grabbed my bag, and I'm on my way.
DANIEL AUKIN: It was a long process to find the right balance of people.
LUNDEN: Director Daniel Aukin says casting the play was time-consuming because "Stereophonic" demands that the actors be believable as characters and musicians.
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 and give them support that they could get to where we needed them to be to pull it off.
LUNDEN: Even before they went into rehearsal, the actors had music lessons on their instruments, says Will Brill, who plays the bass player, Reg.
WILL BRILL: And I learned to play really badly right before we started rehearsals and really, I mean, did a lot of catching up during rehearsals. Like, I didn't play a note before this thing.
LUNDEN: So songwriter Will Butler says it was a leap of faith hoping that these five actors would become a band. And after less than a month of rehearsals, he asked them to open for him at a club in Brooklyn.
BUTLER: And they were great, and they learned so much. 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 being a band is. Like, that taught them the energy that they're bringing to the studio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BRIGHT")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) I'm in the bright light, forgetting my name. The shadow above lies, familiar but strange.
LUNDEN: Sarah Pidgeon says she learned a lot from that experience. She plays Diana, a singer-songwriter with insecurities who grows in confidence as the play goes on, even as her relationship with her husband, Peter, disintegrates. Pidgeon says that even in the moments where the band members fight, when it's time to record, they play perfectly in sync.
PIDGEON: The characters - they want to get it right. This is their passion. This is what they do. Nothing really stands in the way of them making this album.
LUNDEN: Will Butler.
BUTLER: We really worked hard to make it so that the music was really full of love so that when you see the play and the relationships are in tatters - when they play, you feel the depth of the connection, and you're like, oh, this is why they're in the room together.
LUNDEN: Towards the end of "Stereophonic," Sarah Pidgeon's character has a scene with the engineer, and he says to her, wasn't this kind of a nightmare? To which she responds.
PIDGEON: Honestly, this is the best thing that ever happened to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DRIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) If it wakes you in the morning.
LUNDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DRIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) If it keeps you up...
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