“Broadway was so not on my radar in any way,” reflects Juliana Canfield about what she was envisioning when she signed on to do the play “Stereophonic” Off-Broadway last fall. In the months since then, David Adjmi’s drama has not only come to Broadway, but also earned 13 Tony Awards nominations – the most for any play in Tony history – including one for the actress herself. “To feel the love and care that was poured into the production and the equivalent recognition or appreciation for the show is so gratifying,” says the performer, adding, “It’s very special.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Stereophonic” is set in the 1970s and occurs in a recording studio as a band struggles to nail down their next album all while their prior release skyrockets in popularity. During the run at Playwrights Horizons, the ensemble “didn’t know if it would work,” and Canfield admits to “a great deal of anxiety for me associated with that” because “the script is so intricate and demanding and detailed” and because the actors actually play all of the music in the piece live on stage. Now on Broadway, the performer says that the cast’s “intimacy is real and it feels earned” and they have “a sense of ease with the material and an ownership over what we’re saying and what we’re doing.” She has relished the opportunity during the Broadway run to “sink into the mystical layers of the meanings of the play.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Tony nominee Will Brill, ‘Stereophonic’
Early on in the play, Holly makes the monumental decision to break up with her bandmate and husband Reg, played by Tony nominee Will Brill. The scene is particularly devastating because of how Canfield plays the interaction with a quiet intensity. “The story between Holly and Reg is very fraught and very painful,” notes the actress, who adds that in this pivotal scene, she wanted to draw “a major contrast between his explosion and Holly’s imploded, minimal, very lid-on response.” Director Daniel Aukin helped her find the exact right way to perform the scene, and she says the “refrain” that he kept telling her was to “keep my powder dry.” The Tony nominee thinks that it is the “economy of her responses that says so much about her.” She commends costar Brill as “such a wonderful scene partner.”
Those emotional beats are balanced with the euphoria of hearing the band perform on stage and their own joyful reactions to how well the recordings turn out. The first half of the show concludes with a full performance of the song “Masquerade,” which Canfield says, with a laugh, was her “least favorite song to play” initially, though she “always loved” it musically. While many of the songs are heard in snippets during the show, she says of this one, “It is lovely to have that one opportunity to go the whole way down the runway.” Canfield’s character Holly plays the keyboard in the band, and the performer now appreciates playing this song, sharing, “So often when we’re playing the music we can’t hear the audience’s response to it,” but when the band comes out of the booth to listen to the playback, she says, “I feel like we get to be with the audience while we’re hearing the music and it’s a lovely communion for us.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Tony nominee Sarah Pidgeon, ‘Stereophonic’
Another standout moment for the actress is a scene at the beginning of Act IV in which Holly, Diana (Sarah Pidgeon) and Peter (Tom Pecinka) are in the booth recording backing vocals for Holly’s song “Drive.” Diana and Peter have gone through a bitter breakup and cannot get through the session without sniping at each other. Though the scene is hilarious for the audience watching – and though Canfield says she and Pidgeon occasionally broke down laughing while doing the scene Off-Broadway – the actress says “that scene is such a misery for Holly.” She explains that from a character perspective, Holly is furious that her bandmates “can’t put their personal baggage outside of the studio so that we can finish my song.” There’s also the fact that “they’re screaming in my ear, spitting all over my face, it’s kind of gross and so juvenile, and as time has gone on the humor of the scene has gone by the wayside… the terror of the scene has sunk in more and more, which I think paradoxically makes it funnier for people in the house.”
“Stereophonic” doesn’t end on a particularly happy note for Holly. Though the band has nearly completed the album, Diana reveals to her friend that she plans to go off and make a solo album, which Holly experiences as a “betrayal.” As Canfield describes, the two characters often “take refuge in their love and friendship,” but “it can’t always be the two of them doing things in a studio without the world of competition and ambition knocking on their doors… There is a sense that people are starting to leave the party.” As for what the Tony nominee thinks happens to these characters after the end of the show, she shares, “They all do their own projects and maybe they have varying levels of success,” but “they never really find an alchemy as particularly successful and special as this one, and they’re always kind of yearning for it, but they can’t get it back.”