Hunter Theatre Department instructor and playwright David Adjmi was the man of the hour on June 16, as his smash-hit Broadway play, Stereophonic, won five 2024 Tony Awards, including Best New Play and Best Direction.
Stereophonic, set in 1976, depicts the epic tumult during a recording session as members of a rock band try to cut a hit record without cutting each other’s throats. It is Adjmi’s first Broadway production. Known as something of a provocateur, he has staged several earlier plays at downtown theaters.
“David Adjmi is an exceptional talent, and this monumental play so beautifully captures the agony and ecstasy of artistic creation,” said Christine Scarfuto, the director of Hunter’s Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program. “It's a masterful work and absolutely deserving of these accolades. David's been writing plays off Broadway for two decades, so it’s moving to finally see him getting the recognition he has long deserved. He is also a gifted mentor, and we are so grateful to have him teaching in our program.”
Adjmi has taught playwriting at Hunter since 2021. He’s a good fit for Hunter's highly selective and rigorous two-year program, which has a reputation as an incubator of top talent. He teaches Playwriting I, a first-semester course in which students get writing exercises, reading recommendations, and advice tailored specially for them.
“They learn to develop their voices, silence their inner critics, and write the plays only they can write,” in Scarfuto’s words. Adjmi spends considerable time mentoring students in and outside the classroom.
“It's important to have a teacher like David who can set the tone for the rest of their time in the program, and David does just that,” Scarfuto said. “Students emerge from his class feeling more confident in their voices and with a strong sense of who they are as artists and thinkers.”
Previewing the awards in a podcast with The New York Times, Adjmi stressed the importance of letting young playwrights uncover their authentic selves. Describing meetings with a censorious teacher at Juilliard, he said that he spent years doubting his abilities and feeling like an imposter before exorcising those feelings by writing three plays “that were about really bad pedagogical experiences.”
Stereophonic won several other “Best Play” awards this season, including the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, New York Critics Circle, and Drama League.
