About the Playwright: Jonathan Spector
“Jonathan Spector is Tony Award-winning playwright based in Northern California, whose work has been produced on and off Broadway, regionally, and internationally. His plays include EUREKA DAY (2025 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award, for Best Revival); THIS MUCH I KNOW (New York Times Critics' Pick, Edgerton Award); BIRTHRIGHT (upcoming at MCC Theater); BEST AVAILABLE (Elizabeth George Commission); and SIESTA KEY.
Spector’s plays have been produced at theaters across the country including Manhattan Theater Club, Aurora Theater, Theater J, Pasadena Playhouse, Marin Theater, 59E59, Miami New Drama, Asolo Rep, Syracuse Stage, InterAct, Shotgun Players, Mosaic Theater, Colt Coeur, and Just Theater. His work has also been seen at some of the world's leading theaters including London's Old Vic, Vienna's Burgtheater, and Dublin's Gate Theater (upcoming).
Honors include two Glickman Awards for Best Play to premiere in the San Francisco Bay Area, two Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards, Rella Lossy Award, Theater Bay Area Award, and a WhatsOnStage Award Nomination. He has been a Playwrights Center Core Writer, TheatreWorks Core Writer, MacDowell Fellow, SPACE at Ryder Farm Resident, Playwrights Foundation Resident Playwright and is currently working on commissions from Roundabout Theater Company, La Jolla Playhouse and Manhattan Theater Club, His work is published by Dramatists Play Service/Broadway Licensing.
Jonathan is a graduate of the much-besieged New College of Florida and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State. In his misspent youth as an aspiring director, he was a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a frequent collaborator with The Civilians, and a dealer at New York's largest underground poker club. He is represented by CAA and Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment.”
Playwright Interviews
Photo: Jeremy Daniel
Production History
The road to Timeline Theatre
Eureka Day premiered at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, California in 2018. From there it moved to New York in 2019 for an Off-Broadway production. When the theatre world picked back up about the COVID 2020 shutdown Eureka Day jumped across the pond for a sint at London’s Old Vic in 2022. Then, it returned to New York city in November of 2024 for its Broadway Premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club. In 2025 Eureka Day spread across the maps with 8 different productions from the Pasadena Playhouse in California to Nottingham Rep in the United Kingdom. It was also slated for a run at the Kennedy Center in 2025, but was cancelled. Eureka Day has won plenty of awards including the 2025 Tony for Best Revival of a Play, as well as the Drama Desk Award and the Drama League Award for the same category.
Reviews
"So brilliantly yoked to the current American moment—its flighty politics, its deadly folly—that it makes you want to jump out of your skin...I’m still trying to figure out how hard is appropriate for a critic to laugh at the theatre; this night, I made myself hoarse."
- Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker
"Reaches a peak of hilarity that would make Oscar Wilde envious. It’s that good. There wasn’t a soul in the theatre not convulsed with laughter...it is a shockingly beautiful piece of writing."
““Eureka Day” doesn’t have an answer for how to fix this sorry state of affairs, but that it poses the question makes it a play with an unusual amount on its mind, and a fine night of theater that will fuel post-show conversation long after the curtain falls.”
“The show is a polite tiptoe along a cliff, a trek across a field of eggshells that as often as not are strewn atop landmines. Spector has a keen ear for the particular dialect adopted by liberal communities in the aftermath of the first Trump election. For many at this point, it’s a cringily familiar patter: soft-spoken, high-strung, defensive, apologetic, riddled with anxiety. A messy blend of earnestly caring and desperately attempting to perform that care. The terrified dance of the well-intentioned.”
- Sara Holdren, New York Vulture
“Every character gets to land a fair punch, or make a good point, as well as appear both risible and ridiculous. At Eureka Day, as in most places, most people are well-meaning, often deeply misguided, trying to make sense of what limited knowledge and life experience they have.”