University of Iowa alum favorite in Sunday’s Tony Awards

IOWA CITY — The University of Iowa and its alumni have earned a lot of writing awards and recognition over the years — boasting 50-plus Pulitzer Prize winners or finalists; eight U.S. Poets Laureate; 20 MacArthur Genius Grant recipients; and numerous Oscar winners or nominees for work in the film industry.

With its famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Nonfiction Writing Program, International Writing Program, Iowa Playwrights Workshop and other writing-related centers and workshops, the UI sits at fifth in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s “writing in the disciplines” rankings, tying with Yale University as the only public institution on the list.

And still, the iconic writing campus never had an alumni of its Iowa Playwrights Workshop win a Tony Award since the program was founded in 1971.

But that could change Sunday.

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Former UI Theatre MFA student and Iowa Playwrights Workshop alum David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic” play is up for a record 13 awards at the 2024 Tony Awards, which recognize excellence in live Broadway theater. Not only is Adjmi’s play — chronicling the trials of an up-and-coming rock band — nominated for a record number of Tony Awards, it’s a favorite to win the “best play” category.

“He was an outstanding writer. His talent was very clear,” said UI Director of Graduate Studies Art Borreca, who co-heads the Playwrights Workshop and taught Adjmi when he was at Iowa in the late 1990s. “It was clear that he had a really strong voice; that he wrote in a very theatrical way.

“It was pretty clear that he was, you know, exceptional.”

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‘Professional attention’

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Adjmi enrolled in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop in 1998 — the same year Borreca started running the program.

“I remember him applying to the program in 1998 for admission in fall of ’98,” Borreca told The Gazette. “He was one of the students who was admitted as part of that first class that I was primarily responsible for.”

Even then, as a student, Adjmi already was getting “a lot of professional attention” — requiring a balance that UI professors aimed to help him strike. “He was trying to juggle, and we were trying to help him juggle, being a student with being someone who is already getting invited to develop his work professionally,” Borreca said.

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After earning his master of fine arts from the UI in 2001, Adjmi joined the Juilliard School’s American Playwrights Program — and began churning out work for and through the likes of the Sundance Institute, the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Lincoln Center Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company in the United Kingdom, among many others.

UI Department of Theatre Arts Chair Mary Beth Easley said that even before she came to Iowa five years ago, she not only was a big fan of the university but of Adjmi’s work.

“He did a lot of really interesting work off Broadway,” Easley said, citing that history in explaining why Adjmi has found this recent recognition for “Stereophonic” both “remarkable and kind of baffling.”

“This is a commercial award, and he's always been considered a playwright that is brilliant — and not so much commercial, but brilliant in terms of really pushing the barriers in the type of things that he writes,” Easley said. “And so, for him, it’s an invitation into commercial theater.”

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Although “Stereophonic” features a rich repertoire of original music — and is nominated for a Tony in best original score — it’s not technically a musical, according to Borreca, who said that makes the play’s debut on Broadway even more impressive.

“It's very difficult to produce a non-musical play on Broadway,” he said. “There just aren't very many that get produced, because Broadway has become really all about the musicals.”

Borreca — who has stayed in contact with Adjmi — cited an interview his former student recently gave about the experience of producing a play on a historic and iconic stage.

“When they moved into the John Golden Theatre on Broadway to start work on the show, David actually started crying, because he was overcome by the sense of history and legacy,” Borreca said. “The fact that he was in a Broadway theater to do his work, which is something he never expected to happen.”

‘An affirmation’

In addition to Adjmi’s Broadway debut, another UI Theatre alum and playwright, Jen Silverman, will debut her play — The Roommate — on Broadway in August, ushering in another writing first for the UI’s growing list of writing feats.

“I would imagine this is the first time in one year that we've had two playwrights on Broadway at the same time,” Easley said, “which is remarkable.”

As for “Stereophonic” — which follows with “fly-on-the-wall intimacy” the tale of a 1976 rock band on the cusp of superstardom but at risk of breaking up — Tony nominations run the gamut.

Its record 13 nominations include: best play, best original score, best performance by an actor in a featured role, best performance by an actress in a featured role, best scenic design, best costume design, best lighting design, best sound design, best direction, and best orchestrations.

In the actor category, three of the overall five nominees are in “Stereophonic.” In the actress category, two of the overall five nominees are in it.

In a preview of the awards show, the New York Times’ Michael Paulson reports “Stereophonic” has “scored some of the best reviews of the season and seems certain to pick up the Tony Award for best play.” Given more than half of voters Paulson surveyed favored “Stereophonic,” he said the play’s competitors seem unlikely to top it.

“Watch for the possibility that this play could win more Tony Awards than any musical on Sunday night,” Paulson said of “Stereophonic.”

A previous UI alum’s Tony

Although the UI never has had one if its Iowa Playwrights Workshop alums win a Tony, UI graduate Tennessee Williams did so 20 years before the Iowa Playwrights Workshop was founded and Hancher Auditorium opened on the campus.

He won it for The Rose Tattoo in 1951. Williams — who earned his bachelor’s degree in English from the UI in 1938, one year before the campus conferred its first MFA by the School of Fine Arts — also won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays, “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

In more recent UI history — peppered with the obstacles of a devastating 2008 flood and the pandemic that bean in the county in 2020 — Easley said the theater department has been able to overcome and pivot with creativity and resolve.

And she acknowledged the broader significance a first Tony could mean for the playwright program.

“Art should be so happy and proud in this moment,” she said of Borreca. “Because it's an affirmation of the work that he did. … David is so gracious and so kind and speaks so thoughtful about his time here. And so I also just want Art to recognize that this moment is part of his legacy, too.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com