AMERICAN THEATRE: Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day follows several contentious parents’ meetings about vaccine policies at a Berkeley private school. Originally staged in 2018, the play is currently running on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club. He spoke before rehearsals began—and before the 2024 presidential election—with the play’s director, Anna D. Shapiro, as she recovered from Covid.
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How does the meaning of plays change with society? Eureka Day was seemingly a play written by, for, and about a specific group: the people of Berkley, more specifically, parents of young kids. Pre-Covid the show appeared to be a metaphor for democracy, but after Covid its meaning has warped into a play about Covid and the polarization of our society. How many people do you know that think differently from you? Not just about their favorite movie or music artist, but politically or spiritually, about a big issue? Often people end friendships based on a difference of opinion that can’t be overlooked. Rather, should we seek out these relationships? By having friends with different opinions and conversing about those differences we interrogate our own beliefs and learn how to respectfully and considerately have productive conversations. If we only surround ourselves with people we agree with the illusion that everyone thinks the same as us continues to grow causing a growingly polarized society.
The premise of Eureka Day is incredibly intriguing. This sounds like a story that paints a clear picture of a time and place. More than that, however, this play illustrates how the meanings of stories change with the context. When it was first written, the issue of vaccinations was not as big of a debate as it is now. Just two years later, vaccinations and vaccination requirements for schools became a huge topic, one that created huge fissures across the board and drastically affected people’s lives. The author’s comment that they would not have been able to write the play after COVID struck me as surprising, but it started to make sense as I thought about it more. From what it sounds like, the play is not solely about the debate over vaccinations. It’s about how people interact and react in debate and argument. Since COVID skyrocketed this topic in the public view, it could be hard to write the play about the people instead of the specifics of the argument and to not push one side of the debate. It’s a reminder of how much of what a play is is intertwined with the time, space, and situation that it is written in, and then again by the situation in which it is performed in.
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