There comes a point towards the end of the first act of Eureka Day when you just give up trying to follow the cacophony. Instead we lean in and unleash our chortles into full throttle belly laughs. Though the able cast is perfectly capable of projecting their voices to fill East Chapel Hill High School’s Media Room (library), they are now competing with our roars of laughter.
We are at an emergency community meeting of a progressive private day school that prides itself on letting all voices in their community be seen and heard. Because of a mumps outbreak, the school is closed. The war between anti-vaxxers and parents who take CDC authority seriously is on! The five woke-and-then-some parents and school admins in the room still keep their ideological long knives sheathed. Meanwhile, the group chat on the zoom meeting that is scrolling above shows no such constraint. It’s like the right hand and the left hand playing two different piano sonatas at the same time.
To give you the flavor---here's a midway snippet:
102 Arnold Filmore. Just answer honestly: Would you rather have measles or autism?
103 Orson Mankel. Just answer honestly: Were you dropped on your head as a child?
104 Christian Burns. TRUE FACTS: Moon landing wasn't faked. 9/11 wasn't an inside job.
Global Warming is real. Vaccines Don't Cause Autism.
105 Karen Stacin. Mock all you want, but I saw so many bad things as a nurse.
106 Karen Stacin. That’s why I decided I would NEVER subject my children to Western Medicine of any kind.
107 Reid Nuzzi. Did you just say you’d NEVER TAKEN YOUR CHILD TO A DOCTOR????????
I08 Karen Stacin. The best thing I can do for them Is leave their bodies PURE.
109 Tonya Qun. That's child abuse/
110 Leslie Kaufman. [Thumbs-up emoji]
111 Karen Stacin. When they are adults they can make their own choices about their bodies.
112 Carlos Banyon. I'm sorry. As a therapist, I have an ethical obligation to report any at-risk children.
11 3 Carlos Banyon. I'm now have to call CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVlCES
114 Paula Moody. THAT was not called for. Don't be such a fucking asshole.
115 Josephine Lawrence. Breaking News: Human Beings survived MILLIONS of years before Western Medicine.
...And so the meeting goes— down the drain, dragging us in mirth all along the way.
RedBird Theater Goes to Vaccine Debate Ground Zero
In this reviewer’s opinion, scripts rarely get funnier than Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day. It’s also a rare treat for a play to deftly plumb philosophical terrain without an iota of preachiness.
The latter mainly happens in the less humorous second act, where the humanity of both sides of the vaccine debate is unveiled. Though Spector’s ability to humanize all sides of the vaccine debate is admirable, you too might sit there anxious for the script to return to the raucous woke jokes where Spector really shines.
The play introduces us to typecasts some of us are meeting for the first time, but we recognize them in an instant as stererotypes. There is the control freak Karen named Suzanne (played by Jeri Lynn Schulke), who early on confesses that her husband’s joke is that they had 8 IVF children because she couldn’t bear to leave this beloved private school. Suzanne’s foil is Carina (played by Rasool Jahan), a Black parent and first-time member of their committee who has an affinity for facts and science, and seems immune to the Whiteness surrounding her—-until she is not. One of the original Google ten, Eli (played by Nick Popio), is a polyamorous tech zillionaire with a penchant for Namastes whenever the alway-apologizing-for-being-oversized school administrator, Don (played by Adam Traylor) begins a heartfelt non-sequitur reading of a Rumi poem. And then there is Meiko (played by Vanessa “Ness” Nowik), ever knitting like Madame Dafarge on the sidelines, who has a quiet way of exposing her compatriots’ contradictions, and especially when she runs out of the room in frustration.
The direction by Hope Hynes Love is a spot-on mining of Eureka Day’s many script gems. The cast masterfully balances on that line where hamming it up flirts with over the top— always to our great satisfaction. How prescient that Spector’s play was written before COVID and before we all came to learn of RFK Jr. dumping a dead bear in Central Park.
Spector’s one-way ticket to the woke world of the Bay Area is a treat for all satire lovers.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
WHEN & WHERE:
Friday & Saturday, May 9 & 10, 2025
East Chapel Hill High School (Media Room)
500 Weaver Dairy Road.
Chapel Hill, NC.
Friday & Saturday, May 16 & 17, 2025
Whitted Building (2nd Floor)
300 W. Tryon Street.
Hillsborough, NC.
Saturday, May 24
City Hall Auditorium
300 Williamsboro Street.
Oxford, NC.
CAST:
Rasool Jahan, Vanessa Nowik, Nick Popio, Jeri Lynn Schulke, Adam Traylor
CREATIVE TEAM:
Director: Hope Hynes Love
Production Team: Jeff Alguire, JJ Bauer, Veronica Dress, Hannah Haverkamp, Alex Maness
Click here to read more Picture This Post Redbird Theater stories.
About the Author: Amy Munice
Amy Munice is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Picture This Post. She covers books, dance, film, theater, music, museums and travel. Prior to founding Picture This Post, Amy was a freelance writer and global PR specialist for decades—writing and ghostwriting thousands of articles and promotional communications on a wide range of technical and not-so-technical topics.
