“’This is an important vaccine from a public health standpoint,’ [Dr. Bob] writes of the hep B vaccine, ‘but it’s not as critical from an individual point of view.’ In order for this to make sense, one must believe that individuals are not part of the public.”
--Eula Biss, On Immunity
Heated Vaccine Debates Take Center Stage in Colt Coeur’s
EUREKA DAY
An East Coast Premiere
BY JONATHAN SPECTOR
DIRECTED BY ADRIENNE CAMPBELL-HOLT
August 24 – September 21 at Walkerspace
OPENING SET FOR THURSDAY, AUGUST 29TH
General admission tickets start at $20 and are available here!
*WINNER*
Theatre Bay Area Award
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award
Will Glickman Award
Rella Lossy Award
"Jonathan Spector's play is so crisply defined that you might have to periodically remind yourself that you haven't already met these characters in real life...Spector proves as much as master of pathos as of comedy.”-San Francisco Chronicle
We are thrilled to present the east coast premiere of Jonathan Spector’s screamingly funny yet profound EUREKA DAY. Spector’s lauded play uses a heated vaccination debate at a progressive elementary school as a metaphorical lens for the escalating hostility of America’s culture wars and our inability to listen to those with whom we disagree. This timely comedy is directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt (Primary Stages’ Downstairs, Colt Coeur’s Joan). Previews begin Saturday, August 24th with official opening set for Thursday, August 29th.
Carina has just enrolled her son at EUREKA DAY School in Berkeley, CA, where all decisions are made by consensus— diversity and inclusion are valued, and vaccinations are a personal matter. As a freshman member of the private school’s board of directors—one position is always reserved for a new parent so no one gets too calcified in their thinking—she is thrown into the deep end when a mumps outbreak hits the school, forcing parents to choose between their own personal beliefs and what might be best for the community. Opening the discussion up to online trolls during a Facebook Live meeting only moves the committee further away from answering EUREKA DAY’s—and our era’s—most pressing question: how do you find consensus when you can’t agree on the facts?
EUREKA DAY premiered at Aurora Theater in Berkeley, CA in April 2018, where it received all of the region’s new play awards: Glickman Award, Theatre Bay Area Award, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award, and Rella Lossy Award.
The cast for EUREKA DAY is: Tina Benko (“New Amsterdam”, “The Avengers”; Scenes from a Marriage, Top Girls), Elizabeth Carter, KK Moggie (Passage, Daphne’s Dive), Thomas Jay Ryan (“Blue Bloods”, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, The Crucible), and Brian Wiles (“Manifest”, “Billions”). Kate Cullen Roberts (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Breakfast at Tiffany’s) will join the cast for the final week of performances.
The scenic design for EUREKA DAY is by John McDermott; costume design is by Lux Haac; lighting design is by Grant Yeager; sound design is by Amy Altadonna. Colt Coeur produces the engagement, with Ayana Parker Morrison as lead producer, Emily Caffery as line producer and Dominique Bravo as Associate Producer. Sean McGrath serves as Production Manager and Technical Director. Avery Trunko is Production Stage Manager and Katie Cecil Cairns is Assistant Stage Manager. Casting is by Anne Davison. Mehr Kaur serves as the Associate Director.
The performance schedule for EUREKA DAY is Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays and Mondays at 7pm. Opening night is Thursday, August 29th at 7pm. EUREKA DAY will run through Saturday, September 21st.
EUREKA DAY plays at Walkerspace, 46 Walker Street (2 blocks south of Canal Street, between Broadway and Church), New York, NY 10013. Tickets start at $20 and are general admission. For more information and tickets, click here.
BIOS
Jonathan Spector (playwright) is a theatre-maker based in Oakland, CA. In addition to Eureka Day, his other plays include Good. Better. Best. Bested. (Custom Made Theater, San Francisco), In From The Cold (Just Theater, Berkeley) and Siesta Key (Bay Area Playwrights Festival). He has developed work with Roundabout Theatre Company, South Coast Rep, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, Aurora Theatre, The Lark, Crowded Fire, San Francisco Playhouse, Custom Made Theatre, Mugwumpin, Playwrights Foundation, Source Theater Festival, Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Theatre of NOTE, Something Marvelous Theatre, and Stanford’s National Center for New Plays. Upcoming: Eureka Day at Mosaic Theater (Washington, DC), InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia) and Spreckles Performing Arts Center (Sonoma).
ADRIENNE CAMPBELL-HOLT (DIRECTOR): Adrienne is the Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur and the recipient of the 2018 Lucille Lortel Visionary Director Award. Recent world premiere productions: We are Among Us by Stephen Belber (City Theater, Pittsburgh), Hatef**k by Rehana Lew Mirza (WP Theater/Colt Coeur), Joan, by Stephen Belber, starring Johanna Day (Colt Coeur), Downstairs, by Theresa Rebeck starring Tyne Daly and Tim Daly (Primary Stages), Thirst, by C. A. Johnson (Contemporary American Theater Festival), Zürich, by Amelia Roper (Colt Coeur/NYTW), What We’re Up Against by Theresa Rebeck (WP Theater), Empathitrax by Ana Nogueira (Colt Coeur), Cal in Camo (co-pro Rattlestick & Colt Coeur), Theresa Rebeck’s The Nest (Denver Theatre Company), One Child Born (Oberon at American Repertory Theater), How to Live on Earth by MJ Kaufman (Colt Coeur), Chiara Atik’s 52nd to Bowery (EST Marathon), Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur), Reunion by Greg Moss (South Coast Rep), Everything is Ours by Nikole Beckwith (Colt Coeur), Recall by Eliza Clark (Colt Coeur), Fish Eye (Colt Coeur), and Seven Minutes in Heaven by Steven Levenson (Colt Coeur). Adrienne is currently developing the new musical Other World with Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, Ann McNamee & WETA Workshop, as well as Afterwords, with Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek. BA Barnard College, Columbia University. She is also the director of #makeitfair.
Then, next spring - we're proud to present the world premiere of
POLYLOGUES Created, Written, & Performed by Xandra Clark Directed by Molly Clifford
April-May, 2020 at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
Polylogues is a funny, interview-based solo show that explores real people’s experiences with nonmonogamy—and love in all its forms. Writer/performer Xandra Clark is less like an actor and more like a medium, listening on headphones to the interviews as she performs them. By providing anonymity to each interviewee, she channels voices that could never be heard if the storytellers’ identities were known. Though a solo show, Polylogues forges a living polyamorous community on the stage with a diverse set of voices—from a senior citizen who’s been poly for decades to a child worried about her open parents; from liberals in a commune to conservative evangelical swingers; and from the newly empowered to folks critical of how nonmonogamy perpetuates patriarchy and white supremacy. Polylogues examines what 21st century folks want in relationships, what we’re afraid of, and the ways in which tradition attempts to contain us.
Xandra Nur Clark is a journalist-playwright and multidisciplinary performer whose work activates self-investigation, breaks down barriers in understanding across difference, and invites a re-thinking of the “normal” and the “other.” Xandra’s work has been featured at Dixon Place, The Tank, The Flea, Weeksville Heritage Center, Five Myles, Judson Church, Queer Abstract, Caveat, and Brooklyn College, and been funded by NYSCA/Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Community Foundation, and Stanford Arts. Acting credits include at EST, Rattlestick, The Flea, The Lark/Noor Theatre, BAM, Wild Project, and The High Line. Xandra is a 2018-19 Queer|Art Fellow and a company member of The Bats at The Flea, Poetic Theater Productions, and folk choir Ukrainian Village Voices. Xandra co-leads Colt Coeur’s theater education program, received the 2013 Award for Local Reporting from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and is a New York State-certified Rape Crisis Counselor for the Anti-Violence Project crisis hotline. BA Theater, MA Journalism: Stanford University.
Molly Clifford NYC Directing: RETREAT (EST/Youngblood, Two Headed Rep), Karaoke at The Golden Sun Convention Center, Miss Julie, Restaurant in D Major, TARTUFFE (Two Headed Rep), American Dreamers by Lia Romeo (West of 10th), Soldier (All For One), The Elephant in the Room (NY Fringe). Short plays and readings for EST/Youngblood, TinyRhino, 7x7, West of 10th. Assisting: Classic Stage, Playwrights Realm, The Play Company, Vineyard Theatre, EST, Cherry Lane and Yale Rep. Alumna of the National Theater Institute and Connecticut College. Co-Artistic Director of Two Headed Rep. In development: Polylogues (Dixon Place, The Tank) by Xandra Clark. www.mollyclifforddirects.com
COLT COEUR is a Brooklyn-based theater company founded in 2010. We contemplate questions that inspire us and devise theater pieces that respond to and engage with the world in which we live. We address the ambivalence, terror and exhilaration of our age on the scale of person-to-person through theater that utilizes a simplicity of means to achieve richness of expression. Our original, story-driven, visceral theater straddles the line between mainstream and experimental, elevates design while valuing strong storytelling, and pulls you close and doesn't let go.
Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt leads a 16-member ensemble of actors, playwrights and designers to nurture the next generation of theater artists through the development and production of new plays and by providing arts education to students from underserved NYC public schools. Over 9 years, Colt Coeur has produced 11 world premieres; developed 40 plays; and provided free arts education for over 120 students. All 11 of Colt Coeur’s world premieres explored themes of resonance to our times while ranging in subject matter from teen pregnancy (Dry Land), to postpartum depression and the struggle to make ends meet for a working-class family (Cal in Camo), to the underlying appetite for new frontiers that is manifest in applicants looking to travel on a one-way mission to Mars (How to Live on Earth). Half of the productions were developed from scratch with a company of actors, designers, a playwright, and director Adrienne Campbell-Holt. Colt Coeur is currently developing new work with commissioned playwrights Antoinette Nwandu (Paula Vogel Award 2019), and, Lily Padilla (Yale Prize 2019). All of the productions received rave reviews and have gone on to publication and/or subsequent national and international productions.
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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council
Eureka Day is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.