Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day follows a number of contentious dad and mom’ conferences about vaccine insurance policies at a Berkeley personal college. Originally staged in 2018, the play is presently operating on Broadway on the Manhattan Theatre Club. He spoke earlier than rehearsals started—and earlier than the 2024 presidential election—with the play’s director, Anna D. Shapiro, as she recovered from Covid.
ANNA D. SHAPIRO: It’s hysterical to me that I’m speaking to you from my Covid sick mattress. It made me take into consideration this play, and the way lengthy you’ve been dwelling with it and the place it began, by way of what questions you had been asking with it, and the place you end up because it’s about to go to Broadway. Have the questions shifted? Has your focus shifted?
JONATHAN SPECTOR: In a bizarre means, it’s each the identical and totally different. When I started engaged on it, I used to be actually simply attempting to jot down a really Berkeley play a few very particular place and a really particular group of individuals. The cause vaccine skepticism appeared like an fascinating factor to discover was as a result of, at the moment, it was the one subject the place you could possibly have individuals who mainly all agree about all the things apart from this one factor. In doing analysis, I had spent quite a lot of time at nighttime recesses of bizarre message boards and grappling the unusual beliefs individuals had. This was additionally within the lead as much as the 2016 election, so it was additionally a scary second of realizing how the entire nation was dwelling in these two very separate realities. So that was informing it. But it nonetheless felt very explicit to the place, and in addition to a problem that, until you occur to have school-age youngsters or a brand new child, you most likely didn’t spend quite a lot of time excited about. It felt very personal—like, this can be a play for Berkeley, about Berkeley, made by individuals in Berkeley, on a problem I had turn into obsessive about however most individuals don’t actually care about that a lot.
To have it form of explode out to be, like, a problem your entire world is obsessive about was very unusual. Although there’s additionally a means through which this can be a wonderfully goldilocks second to be doing it. In the pre-Covid interval, it had three or 4 productions, and other people at the moment had been extra capable of see the vaccine debate as form of a metaphor for democracy and society. Two years later, when theatre was simply coming again, it appeared like all anyone might see was it being someway a play about Covid. But now we’re on this very bizarre place the place we’re “over” Covid—however clearly not, since you will have it—and we’re attempting to navigate this unusual area of constructing decisions, individually and collectively, about balancing the wants of society to get again to life and the necessity to enable people who find themselves immunocompromised to exist in society. We’re on this place of no one actually being positive anymore what the solutions are to these questions, and all people sort of navigating it in another way, and other people nonetheless feeling very intensely on one finish of the spectrum or the opposite about what everybody needs to be doing. I believe that makes it an fascinating time to do the play.
At the identical time, the expertise of watching the play with an viewers is similar to the expertise of watching it with an viewers pre-Covid. The viewers is responding to the identical moments within the play in largely the identical means. Which is smart, as a result of individuals react to particular issues people do onstage and to not their shifting emotions about summary concepts on viruses and public well being.
In studying and rereading the play, it’s reminding me how linked now our id is to our perception, and the disaster that exists now round who we’re being linked to what we consider. Where is nuance allowed? How can we avoid dogmatism? The individuals on this play are struggling towards one thing lovely—for a spot the place all people’s okay. Yet the query that retains getting begged is, who will get to determine what all people being okay is? What does all people being okay imply? I take into consideration that loads now. I’ve encountered so many individuals all through Covid the place I assumed I shared each political place with them on the planet, till it got here to vaccinations, after which I discovered they didn’t consider in them. Not solely did they not consider in them, they actively didn’t consider in them. So what do you do when there are these outliers who simply blow all the things up? I really feel like that’s what the play wrestles with loads.
Yeah, and with how these previous eight years have modified us—the acceleration of how media and expertise work, and the way the algorithms create a reinforcing mechanism that makes us consider that just about all people thinks precisely like we do about all the things. This makes it rather more jarring than it was to come across any individual who doesn’t suppose such as you do. It’s laborious to recollect, however I really feel like 15 years in the past, you’d discuss to any individual at an airport bar and also you didn’t assume you had been gonna have the identical view about something and that was positive, whereas now I believe we have now turn into very apprehensive about individuals who don’t consider the issues that we consider. There’s the priority of the place this entire chain of perception goes to steer; should you consider that the well being dangers of vaccines are being hidden as a part of an infinite conspiracy, what else might you probably consider? If you’re in a conspiracy principle state of mind, then you definitely’re supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president, after which immediately you’re supporting Trump as a result of he’s endorsed him. It’s a very simple slippery slope to fall down. But in fact, all people feels that means about all people else.