In 2015, playwright Jonathan Spector was commissioned to write a new play by the intimate Aurora Theater in Berkeley, California. He wanted to pen a story unique to Berkeley. A native of the neighboring Oakland, Spector began to notice an unexpected divisiveness in his own community. “I had had this experience a couple of times of having conversations with friends or acquaintances, people who were just as smart or more than me — highly educated and with whom I really shared a political worldview and the same values — and then would discover that they did not vaccinate their children,” Spector recalled. “I was so thrown by that and so curious about it — how it was that we could agree on everything except in this one specific area.”
What emerged from Spector’s curiosity is “Eureka Day,” a comedy currently in previews at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, the play is set at a progressive private school in Berkeley. After a mumps outbreak at the school, the parent board and school principal meet to decide their way forward.
In the latest episode of Broadway Press Day, Spector, Shapiro and the cast of the Broadway mounting share insights about their process and what to expect from “Eureka Day.”
“It is a through-and-through comedic experience, but one that is ... sophisticated,” actor Thomas Middleditch, who makes his Broadway debut with the play, tells Broadway News in this episode. “It does feel smart, especially when you’re talking about issues that feel divisive or maybe even at times political. I think to have to have it be delivered through comedy is, the best way to do it.”
“For me,” Spector added, “the question that really informs the play is how do you make a community or a democracy with people if you can’t agree on what’s true?”
Listen to the full episode below:
