Can a Play About Vaccines Be a Laughing Matter? Playwriting Alum Jonathan Spector Thinks So

Monday, August 26, 2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES -- Jonathan Spector, 40, who wrote Eureka Day, said that he started thinking about vaccines as a subject after moving with his girlfriend, now his wife, to the Bay Area. When their friends started having children, whispers began to circulate at farmers markets and house parties that this person or that person was refusing the shots.

He read hundreds of scripts a year as the literary manager of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and went on to get a Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from San Francisco State University.

“I had this experience of talking to people who were very smart, very well educated, and sort of agreed with me about everything,” Mr. Spector said. “And then you would realize that in this one area, they seem to live on a different planet than you do.”

Eureka Day, which is in previews and opens on Thursday at Walkerspace in a Colt Coeur production, follows four parents and the principal as the school faces down the mumps — and as the perceived good of the individual crashes into the good of the group.

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