Stereophonic immediately caught our attention when it was announced due to its rock band subject matter and the involvement of Will Butler of Arcade Fire. It went on to be a big winner at the 2024 Tony Awards, taking home more awards — Best Play, Best Direction of a Play, Best Featured Actor for Will Brill, Best Scenic Design of a Play, and Best Sound Design of a Play — than any other production. Will Brill, who plays Reg, delivered a much-memed speech thanking his therapist when he won, which he talked to Billboard about. “My PR person came up to me and was like, ‘The internet loved your speech,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so nice.’ I just assumed that it was like, either the internet loves your speech or hates your speech — I had no idea that me shouting out my therapist was going to be any kind of a big deal or that shouting out the rest of my cast, for that matter, was going to be a big deal, too. But they both sort of showed up everywhere. I got a really sweet text from my therapist that at first was all caps, ‘HOLY S–T, YOU WON! F–K YEAH!’ And then, two minutes later, ‘Oh my God, Will, this is so sweet,’ which really made me happy.”
Brill also told Billboard about some of the actual bass players who inspired his performance. “I definitely watched videos of John McVie playing,” he said. “Will Butler is the only frontman I can think of off the top of my head who also plays bass, and he is so dance-y in his shows — he’s so free, he’s a true wild man on stage, and he was really a big source of inspiration. I went to see Muna recently, and the band that opened for them [Nova Twins], it was these two British girls playing kind of hardcore music and dressed up sort of like punk-style Raggedy Ann. The bassist would jump around and run around the stage, and I remember thinking like, ‘I want to get close to that and I want to have that freedom of movement.’ Other than that, learning the instrument was so hard and learning the play was so hard that there was not really a lot of room outside your imagination to do extra research.”
Brill also talked to Good Morning America about his eight-year journey with the project. Sporting a jacket he found on the street with a painted-on Joni Mitchell design on the back, Brill said, “Without my therapist, I truly don’t know where I’d be.” He continued, “When I first workshopped the show, I was drinking heavily and engaged to be married. I am now sober and divorced…That is a journey that Reg goes through in the show.”
Later in the interview, Brill relayed the story of his first meeting with playwright David Adjmi, saying that Adjmi had only written seven pages of what would become Stereophonic when they first met in 2015. “He, who is a little bit psychic, was like, ‘I think you’re gonna be in this play someday,’” Brill said. Watch the interview in full below.
Stereophonic tells the story of a ’70s rock band trying to make it, and features songs by Will Butler. After a final extension, it’s on Broadway through January 12 only. Get tickets while you have the chance. Here’s the Playbill synopsis: “Stereophonic mines the agony and the ecstasy of creation as it zooms in on a music studio in 1976, where an up-and-coming rock band finds itself on the cusp of superstardom… This electrifying new play takes audiences inside the powder keg process of a band on the brink of blowing up.”
Get tickets and more info HERE.
We get to say “I knew him when.”
🎥: @PaulWontorek pic.twitter.com/M9NLzvHdN8— Stereophonic: Live on Broadway (@stereobway) July 5, 2024
You can also catch Will Butler with his own band The Sister Squares live at Joe’s Pub in NYC on 1/19.