David Adjmi

David Adjmi was called "virtuosic" by the New York Times and was named one of the Top Ten in Culture by The New Yorker. His plays have been produced at theaters around the world such as Lincoln Center, RSC, Steppenwolf, and Soho Rep--where he was the Mellon Foundation playwright-in-residence for three years. His play 3C was selected as one of the top ten plays of the year by the New York Post, Time Out and the Advocate. Elective Affinities premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and received a sold out U.S. premiere at Soho Rep starring Zoe Caldwell (Top 10 of the year in Time Out, The New Yorker.) Other plays include Stunning, The Evildoers, and Marie Antoinette. Adjmi was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Kesselring Prize for Drama, and the Steinberg Playwright Award, among others. His new play The Stumble was recently excerpted in The Paris Review, and his two-part play The Blind King (co-written with Donald Seligman) is currently in development with The Public. With Lila Neugebauer, David is writing a musical based on Brian Wilson’s creation of the Smile album. He holds commissions from Playwrights Horizons, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep, and the Royal Court (UK). His critically acclaimed memoir Lot Six was published by HarperCollins in 2020, and his collected plays are published by TCG.

Will Butler

Will Butler is an Oscar-nominated and Grammy-winning musician. As a member of Arcade Fire, he released some of the defining rock and roll albums of the 2000s—including Funeral (2004)and The Suburbs (2010), which won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He has collaborated with a wide range of film and video makers, including Spike Jonze, Chris Milk, and Roman Coppola. Along with Owen Pallett, he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Score for Jonze's 2013 film Her. He currently records under his own name for Merge Records, and has a forthcoming project with the band Sister Squares. Stereophonic is his first theatre work since Godspell, in high school, where he played the role of Jesus. 

• “Critic's Pick! Adjmi ingeniously weaves sound and story into something as granular as it is operatic... A relentlessly compelling production by Daniel Aukin that has the grit of a documentary... as rich and lustrous as they come. You could even call it platinum.”

  — Jesse Green, The New York Times | Read Full Article

• “When the last time a play made you cry just because it was so damn good? In turning friction into fire in a California recording studio, David Adjmi's "Stereophonic," at Playwrights Horizons, reminds you that nothing thrills like theater at its best.”

  — Ben Brantley, former chief theater critic, The New York Times | Read more.