To vax or not to vax? 💉
Broadway is asking
If you’ve made it this far, take a breath. I can feel your blood pressure rising. There’s nothing quite like the topic of vaccinations [insert bodily autonomy, women’s rights, puberty blockers, trans athletes] to get folks all riled up. It makes for good drama—or at least that’s what playwright Jonathan Spector thinks.
Audiences agree. Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Eureka Day has been extended twice, now playing at Broadway Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 16. But I don’t live in New York! Broadway is too expensive! That’s why I’m here.
Spector is a bit of a Nostradamus, having written the play pre-pandemic with its 2018 premiere at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkley, California, where the play takes place.
Trouble is brewing at Eureka Day School, where an outbreak of mumps has sent faculty and parents into a cacophony of conflict. Over a series of meetings, they hotly debate the age-old question (or at least as old as 1879, when Louis Pasteur created the first live attenuated bacterial vaccine): to vax or not to vax?
Remarkably, we’re approaching the fifth anniversary with our nemesis COVID-19, but not to be undone now, bird flu wants in on the action if we’re around long enough to avoid self-combusting.
Eureka Day shines a surgical lamp on the vaccination debate with pathos and parlance. Particularly when the committee calls a Zoom meeting, and all hell breaks loose as a deluge of participants voice their concerns and let their true feelings rip like a Band-Aid.
And if you happen to be in New York City, Eureka Day is participating in Broadway Week (January 21 - February 9), where you can secure 2-for-1 tickets with the code BWAYWK25.
IMC takeaway: As my vax-loving friend says, juice me up. However, I’d never again save myself a trip to the pharmacy by receiving the flu and COVID vaccine simultaneously, which completely knocked me on my ass. Live and learn. But at least I lived.