When this year’s Tony Awards nominations were announced, Juliana Canfield — one of the stars of this year’s most nominated play, Stereophonic — was in a bagel shop, en route to a Pilates class. “I hadn’t wanted to set my expectations too high, for the show or myself,” she explains. “But I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to look.’ So I sat down and watched the announcement on my cell phone, on silent, and I was shocked and happy — not only to see my name, but to see it next to Sarah’s, and those three boys.”

That would be Sarah Pidgeon, nominated alongside Canfield for performance by a featured actress; the “boys” are their castmates Will Brill, Eli Gelb, and Tom Pecinka, all contenders for featured actor. In all, Stereophonic, David Adjmi’s lavishly acclaimed look at a rising 1970s rock band battling personal and creative demons while recording an album in California, collected 13 nods — more than any play to date — including Best Play. Director Daniel Aukin was also tapped, as was Arcade Fire alumnus Will Butler, for his original music.

In the production, which transferred to Broadway after earning rave reviews last fall at Playwrights Horizons, Canfield (known to TV fans for her role as beleaguered executive assistant Jess Jordan in the series Succession) is Holly, a British singer, songwriter, and keyboardist who’s one of five members of an Anglo-American group.

Holly is breaking up with her husband, the band’s bass guitarist, Reg, played by Brill, as the recording sessions take place. Canfield, a Yale School of Drama graduate who last appeared on the New York stage in an Off-Broadway production of María Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends, was drawn to the play’s mix of hyperrealism and mystery. “It’s so grounded and true to life, but there are so many ellipses and questions and secrets hidden in the play—including many that I haven’t discussed, or really even articulated to myself,” she says.

Canfield explains, “There are moments in this play, or accumulations of moments, that create deep associations or emotional reactions, and those reactions don’t come out of anything explicitly said in the text. There are so many things in the play that David hasn’t spelled out for us; he relies on us and on Daniel to let the silt settle, and suddenly you can see the fish swimming around in the pond.”

To play a musician in the ’70s, Canfield says, “I started listening to more than usual to music from that era.” She was particularly drawn to the famously reclusive singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading: “There’s a moment in the play where Holly says she’s a shy person, and she’s ashamed of her shyness and tries to hide it; she loves music and feels compelled to play it. I didn’t know a lot about Joan Armatrading’s music, but I love it, and she was also reluctant to be in the spotlight, and didn’t seem to invest in her persona as much as many of her contemporaries did.”

Canfield also soaked up the music of singer-songwriter Sandy Denny, another Brit. “She had more of a brush with pain and addiction, and Holly’s in a lot of pain in the play,” she says. (Drugs and alcohol also figure into the tormented relationships in Stereophonic.) The actress notes, “I tried to listen to people who had a connection to my understanding of the character.”

While not an experienced musician herself, Canfield has loved to sing harmony since she attended Episcopal school, “where we had to go to church services, and the best thing about it was learning the hymns. I’m usually a very private singer, so it’s been a change to sing in front of people. But I love singing with Sarah and Tom.”

Canfield adds that Butler and his co-orchestrator Justin Craig “have been so generous in orchestrating the music, really letting us have input. And the music is incredible. People love this kind of music, and getting to see the joy and humor and horror that goes into making these songs, which score the highest highs and the lowest lows in people’s lives.”

Stereophonic has been, for Canfield, “a collective labor of love. It’s taken so much time and been made with so much love and integrity. The producers at Playwrights Horizons didn’t take any shortcuts, and that has continued with the producers we have on Broadway. I feel like all of its elements are so perfectly chosen and cast; each one is so great, but altogether it’s a project where each piece is of equal value, which is very rare.”