When Theatre Mirrors Community
Reflections on Eureka Day
Suzanne (Lisa Anne Porter), Carina (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong), Don (Howard Swain), Eli (Teddy Spencer), and Meiko (Charisse Loriaux) argue in Eureka Day, presented by Marin Theatre in partnership with Aurora Theatre Company. [Photo Credit: David Allen]
Good news: this run of Eureka Day is extended to Sept 28th — and selling fast. Enjoy Play Club member Stephanie Miller’s insider peek, and grab your tix HERE.
A Tony-winning play made for a perfect night out. I recently joined a sold-out house at Marin Theatre Company to see Eureka Day. Originally commissioned and produced by Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company in 2018, the play landed in New York after winning local Theatre Bay Area awards, and I feel the play’s message is even more relevant now as national conversations about schooling and vaccinations sharpen. I was especially glad to see this production because Aurora, like many regional theatres, is not mounting a season this year due to funding shortfalls. That context made Marin’s reunion of Aurora’s original director Josh Costello and much of the original cast feel like a small triumph.
Eureka Day imagines a tiny private school in Berkeley run by a committee that decides everything by consensus in a library lined by books donated by families that founded the school. The school board’s minor dramas, which include flirtations, a cross-country move, virtue-signaling, are eclipsed when a mumps outbreak forces the school to not only quarantine for days on end but also to consider mandatory vaccinations. As a librarian, I recognized the set’s library as a safe but hardly neutral space: its donated books and coziness are the quiet before the storm of competing values.
Leontyne Mbele-Mbong’s Carina arrives as a newcomer who both observes and quietly (at first) resists the board’s posturing. Her side-eye and restrained reactions grounded the play’s early scenes. Teddy Spencer’s Eli is performatively physical and loud; Howard Swain’s Don gently shepherds meetings with a raddled Big Lebowski vibe; Lisa Anne Porter’s Suzanne defaults into leadership and assumptions; Charisse Loriaux’s Meiko knits through much of the chaos, only to reveal a surprising outburst of pain later. The actors’ chemistry simultaneously made it feel like a very Bay Area conversation (open marriages, reading Rumi, a parent who works at a big tech company, and artisanal scones) as well as a conversation that could happen in any PTA or board meeting.
Scenic and lighting design deserve special mention. Jeff Rowlings’s light shifts and Richard Olmsted’s hand-painted vista of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands beautifully mark the passing days and the play’s tonal swings. When the school is ordered closed, the production explodes into sharply observed comedy. The livestreamed board meeting sequence, complete with projected chat bubbles and emojis, had me and the whole audience roaring. The chat projections, a parade of blue bubbles and the well-timed sarcastic thumbs-up, brilliantly externalized the online frenzy that fuels real-world conflict.
Beneath the laughs, Spector digs into harder emotional ground. Lisa Anne Porter’s closing monologue as Suzanne exposed the heart of this play like an open wound: the tragedy and difficulty of empathizing while simultaneously disagreeing with someone. Her performance was heartbreaking, precise, and convincing. After the show my husband and I drove home talking about that monologue and how eerily prescient the play feels in our current political climate (the RFK, Jr. and Florida of it all). The play also has me reflecting on my mom’s stories of church-board dynamics and how power and petty decisions recur across different communities.
My membership in Play Club made this evening richer. Our pre-show discussions and post-show conversations with production collaborators deepen how I see choices actors and designers make. Members get that backstage intimacy and a more curious, informed relationship to new work. Eureka Day is the kind of play that sparks conversation about social justice, empathy, and how communities govern themselves. I am spreading the word and would definitely see again.
Eureka Day: it is sharp, funny, and quietly devastating. If you are local, run don’t walk. If you are not local, look for it when it comes to your town, and consider how being part of a theatre community like Play Club changes the way you watch, think, and talk about the issues affecting your communities.
Guest blog by:
Stephanie Miller, Bay Area Play Club Member
