Video: EUREKA DAY Celebrates Opening Night

This is going off the rails in a way I don't know how to bring back

That's not you. Come on, brother. Get me in here. We were talking about

Welcome to Broadway, how you're feeling, feeling great. We feel great. We feel great

We're filled with just the right amount of nutmeg spice and mistletoe energy

We're ready to go. Eureka Day. Hi, I'm Emily Grace Tucker, and I'm here with Broadway World at the Samuel J

Redeeman celebrating the opening of Eureka Day. Eureka Day is about a small private progressive school in Berkeley, California

set in the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, and the characters are the board of directors who are parents and the head of school

And because of their commitment to progressive values, they make all their decisions by consensus

And then when they have an outbreak of months, they struggle to find a way forward through consensus

I started writing it in 20th. 2016, and it premiered in 2018 in Berkeley

I could never have written it after COVID. I think it's, you know, I think for me, like any play is like a sort of obsession

Like, you know, writing plays is like a series of obsessions of something you stumble upon

and sort of get very interested in and sort of you're diving down the rabbit hole wherever it takes you

And I think it's kind of impossible to do that if the thing that you're obsessed about is something that everybody else is obsessed about at the same time

because you can then follow your own impulses as well So yeah it can only have been written then This is a sharp set of five character studies

And it is, you're right, it is so funny at times that it calls on all of your skill to, like

get the laughs erupt and then get your words in so the next laugh can happen

But it is also, it is a set of character studies and a story of loss

how people, we have to give up on some things. We have to even give up sometimes on some relationships

And so it is an extremely funny play about people caught in a real, real human dilemma

My character, Suzanne, has a couple moments where she loses her shit

And I'm a pretty conflict-averse human being. And so the couple of times that's happened to me

with people that weren't in my immediate family because we all have moments with our family

But really just two or three times that's happened to me in a public space

it's both terrifying and thrilling because you're actually going to speak your piece

So I feel very organized in the play to do that. Like Jonathan sets it up really well for me

The place I'm drawn to really have some emotional thread that's undeniably interesting

This one is a great example of that A really rich emotional thing that I haven played before And also the actual writing the actual way in which the words are put onto the page is super interesting to me as well

I relate to him in the sense that, like, Eli, he's in the group scenario, and everyone, there's a problem, and everyone's offering their way of massaging around it. And Eli kind of tries to solve it

He, like, wants to, like, fix the puzzle and just offer a solution. And I suppose in that way, I can relate, because, like, sometimes when there's a lot of faffing up out

I like to just sort of, like, get right to the solve, if, as it were

Sometimes clumsily, sometimes articulately, just like Eli. He does a little both

Many people, after seeing this show, I think, particular New York politics, have said, like

thank you for being the voice of reason. And I'm like, oh, I'm not the way. voice of reason to everybody, but I have been to a lot of people that have seen the show thus

far. Yeah, it's five people really debating and trying to find consensus for a while until they

can't, but it's admirable how well they listen to each other and how hard they try. It's just

admirable how they really try to come together and aren't able to in the end, but they try

you know, and they don't assume just because you disagree, there's no assumption that you're

stupid or wrong, like two truths can coexist. So I find that really beautiful about the play

This is my Broadway and my New York theater generally debut. Oh my goodness how exciting What are you most looking forward to working on Broadway Oh my gosh Is it anticlimactic to say that what I was most looking forward to has already passed

Just being able to be in the room with these luminaries. It has actually just been one of the greatest pleasures and honors of my life

I mean, I think Eureka Day, like so many wonderful Manhattan Theater Club productions, just leapt off the page in its humor

in its heart, in its humanity. And when you check all three of those boxes

as Jonathan Spector did with this play, it just screams, attention must be paid

And, you know, emphasis on humor, because I think this is one of the

has one of the most amazing, hilarious scenes that having not seen it on stage before

but having just read it, I said, wow, this is going to be a home run

And we think it is. And I think the interesting thing is, Nikki was a bit clairvoyant, even though she might not have realized it

which is this is a play that is about a group of people making decisions about vaccines

The play was first done out in Brooklyn pre-pandemic, and a group of people are deciding about a mumps vaccine

Then the play was done in London when it was sort of all over. And now, here we are again, and we're looking at the newspaper and seeing issues about vaccines

So I think Nikki had some kind of attachment to the universe in which she had a feeling about what was going on and what people would want to talk about and what people would want to come engage in conversation about but have a really good time doing it