Scene 3 of the new Broadway production of “Eureka Day” It could be titled The Way We Step Now. As written by the playwright Jonathan SpectorThe scene reliably witnesses them laughing so loudly that the actors drown.
The situation is this: It’s 2018. The superintendent of Progressive Eureka Day Schools in Berkeley, California, and the four members of her executive committee must inform the other parents that their student has the flu, and therefore by law, any students whose students have not been vaccinated must stay home to avoid Exposure. (Vaccine skepticism was not uncommon in this, especially pre-Probate, milieu.)
“How can we come together as a community and share ideas about a difficult issue,” the principal of the school, an upbeat bunch dedicated to diversity and inclusion, tells a town hall-style meeting.
At the meeting, held remotely, Don speaks while sitting in front of a laptop in the school library, addressing parents on a Zoom-like video app. Executive committee members are behind him. The rest of the school parents weigh in and chat-like function. Their letters – 144 of them – are expected to be read by the public.
Online conversation quickly devolves into malicious attacks. “Typical behavior of the Fascist Executive Committee.” “Sorry, chiropractors are not doctors.” “This is child abuse!!!”
“Scrolling past their predictable comments (“Did you fall on your head as a child?”) is the exposed identity of a community that professes ideal regard for differing opinions but is in fact hotbeds of intolerance,” Jesse Green, chief theater critic for The New York Times, said. He wrote in his review From the play.
Each comment is assigned to one of dozens of fathers—each with their own names and avatars—and fitted to specific moments in the script. The audience’s attention is always drawn to the expected comments. The result is something very unusual – and hugely funny.
In interviews, several of the artists involved in the current Manhattan Theater Club production of the play at the Samuel J. Friedman and the first start in The Aurora Theater Company explained how this scene is structured, what makes it work and why Don (who reads the comments) notes, “IIIIIII feel like this format doesn’t facilitate all of us bringing our best selves to this conversation.” These are edited excerpts of our conversations.
“Eureka Day” debuted in 2018 in Berkeley, California, as an Aurora Theater Company commission.
Josh Costello (Artistic Director, Aurora Theater Company) This was the before that. There have been measles outbreaks occurring because parents did not vaccinate their children.
Bill Irwin (Don, director) The play is set in, and in some ways revolves around, Berkeley, California. I know Berkeley and love Berkeley, in its deep vulnerability and integrity at the same time. And there is a kind of – I’m afraid to concede here, but with cold eyes – the moral there is an image.
Jonathan Spector (playwright) When I was researching the play, I spent a lot of time in the depths of these Internet message boards where people argue about vaccines. And they are just so bad. Since so much of the way we live our lives — certainly around an issue like this — is online, I felt like not bringing that element into the play would leave out a really important part of how we interact.
Irwin These personalities love the idea of community and consensus. One of my favorite things recently about the show is the anticipation, in Scene 2, of excitement about how great Scene 3 will be. This is pride before the fall.
The production’s stage manager taps into each chat message, posting each one at the exact moments that the script considers lines on stage. Messages appear above the actors, the audience, and on a laptop screen that only the actor playing can read.
Spector There is no way to do this if this is an actor [playing Don] He doesn’t have it [the messages] In front of him, because in the moments, he’s a surrogate for the audience – his reaction to what’s happening is a big part of this scene.
Nikki Hunter (Associate Artistic Director, Manhattan Theater Club) For the couple’s first previews, we had to make sure we were amplifying Bill Irwin’s voice appropriately—the laughter was so strong, they couldn’t hear the cues.
Charles M. Turner III (Production Stage Manager) I call the show off stage right. I have a speaker giving me the feed through the stage microphones. But the laughter trumps that. So sometimes I’m following along in the script and I see, “Yes, Bill said that word,” or I’m waiting for a gesture from him. It’s never the same way twice – in a beautiful way. I know this is probably scary for the director to hear.
Anna D. Shapiro (Director) What you’re trying to do is make sure the audience can relax into what they can’t hear, understand that they’re not supposed to hear certain things, and make them think that they’re the only ones catching other things – “Oh, did you hear that?” The goal is to make them happy. It is accessible and real at the same time.
Turner Usually Bill would be directing this scene and he’d give me a high five or a thumbs up, or we’d look at each other funny, or we’d be like, “Wow, that’s the audience.” There’s always a little check-in. Pretty much we check this scene every day.
As new actors and crew members arrive at the play, they are surprised by how the audience responds to the scene.
Spector That first performance, I had feedback running continuously through the scene with no breaks, and you couldn’t hear a word on stage because there was so much laughter.
Costello He had to go back and rewrite, and work on the timing of when everything appears, so that some of the really important lines of dialogue could still be heard. Built in pause. It made it less funny. It made it flow better and allowed two main lines of dialogue to fall flat, so you could follow what was happening.
Jessica Hecht (Susan, executive committee parent) When we were in rehearsal, no one laughed. And I said, “The audience will feel that I have a weak argument.” And Jonathan said, “No, I don’t think they are. I think they would laugh at the Zoom feed.” And I kept thinking, “God, he’s so full of himself!” Cut to the first preview, they’re screaming with laughter.
The four actors playing the parents act an entire scene, with the dialogue, knowing that the audience is largely not hearing or paying much attention to them.
Text “Eureka Day” that it important That the actors don’t catch the laughter coming from the live broadcast comments. The scene is designed to allow many lines to be lost.
Hasht I have to stay in my lane. I am not the agent of this scene. Bill and Chuck [the production stage manager] Get dancing, there is very little left to chance. I’d equate it to certain TV shows where they have a high level of comedy, and you wonder if there’s some great, great spirit among the cast, and the answer is: no, it’s written, directed and acted within an inch of its life.
Irwin Sometimes, you have to think of yourself as a prologue—an important part of the story, but almost a scene of people talking, and thinking that what they’re talking about is the most important thing.
Among those who produce the scene, theories abound about what exactly makes it.
Spector Early on in Covid, I was constantly getting screenshots from friends on Zoom of their kids’ school, like, “Oh my God, I’m in your play.”
Irwin It’s Jonathan’s shrewd writing. It’s a kind of Berkeley Chekhov. Our illusions about where we sit and how important we are in the world.
Spector If we are already in the room with another human, there is a limit to how far we can drive. But when you are online, this disappears.
Shapiro The scene makes people feel seen, and acknowledge at every level our experiences over the past two years. It was just a horror show without any decor. And whether that plays out on a larger scale — which it does — it plays out on a local scale as well, which is what happens when a fundamentally homogeneous group realizes that they don’t share every belief and thinking.
Spector [The audience’s following the chat] Perhaps it says an unfortunate amount about how our attention works with technology. But that’s the thematic idea of the scene: that any attempt at thoughtful discussion and collaboration that might have been fruitful in real life, once placed online, becomes impossible.
Costello In some ways, the play seems more important than it did before the pandemic. When Al-Haqq decided that there was political capital in denying the science of vaccinations, he changed that dynamic. The play is still about people on the left, but ultimately it’s not about the play. The play is about, “How do you get along with people when you can’t agree on the facts?”
Irwin I’m very careful – I’ll use the word almost ball To talk about the scene, because of its delicate mystery.
