Tony Award-Winning Eureka Day Comes to Theater J

Theater J is bringing one of the most acclaimed comedies in recent Broadway history to Washington, DC this spring. Jonathan Spector's Tony Award-winning Eureka Day will run from March 11 to April 5, 2026, at the Edlavitch DCJCC, directed by Artistic Director Hayley Finn. The production marks a triumphant return to the nation's capital for the play — and a homecoming of sorts for Spector, who once held an internship at Theater J and whose sold-out 2024 hit This Much I Know made him a favorite of the company's audiences.

Eureka Day at Theater J

Set at a fictional progressive private school in Berkeley, California, Eureka Day follows the five members of the school's executive committee as they navigate policy, identity, and community through their consensus-only decision-making process. The committee prides itself on inclusivity and representation, carefully deliberating every issue from admissions forms to school culture. But when a mumps outbreak sweeps through the student body, the group is forced to confront the question of mandatory vaccinations — and their carefully maintained harmony begins to unravel.

What makes the play so remarkable is its ability to mine genuine, sustained laughter from subject matter that might seem impossible to find funny. Productions across the country have left audiences gasping for air between volleys of sharp, witty dialogue, particularly during a now-legendary sequence in which the board opens the vaccination debate to an online parent forum. As projected comments from the community spiral from concerned to combative to utterly unhinged, the contrast between the board's earnest composure and the chaos erupting on screen has consistently produced some of the most explosive laughter audiences have experienced in a theatre. The scene is both a brilliant piece of stagecraft and a painfully accurate mirror of modern online discourse.

But Spector's play is far more than a comedy. Beneath the laughs lies a deeply perceptive examination of how progressive institutions function — and how they fail. The play asks what happens when a commitment to hearing every voice becomes a tool for avoiding hard decisions, and when the language of inclusivity is used to silence rather than empower. Each character on the board is drawn with empathy and complexity, from the well-meaning administrator desperate to keep the peace, to the anti-vaccine parent whose opposition is rooted in genuine personal pain, to the newest board member — a Black woman — who quickly discovers that not all voices in the room carry equal weight. Rather than reducing its characters to caricatures, the play treats their perspectives seriously, making its satire all the more cutting and its drama all the more resonant.

The DC production carries an additional layer of significance. Eureka Day was originally planned to run at the Kennedy Center in 2025, but was cancelled after the institution was taken over by President Donald Trump. Upon the cancellation, Spector told Deadline, "I think it would have been really difficult to be there because once Trump has appointed himself king of the Kennedy Center and they've fired a lot of people and pushed out a lot of artists for political reasons, I don't know if it's possible to be there and not on some level sort of be complicit in all that." Theater J was more than happy to step in to become the home of Eureka Day's DC run.

"I am thrilled to be bringing Jonathan Spector's sharp, funny, and extremely timely play to Theater J this season," says Finn. "Jonathan is a brilliant playwright, and Eureka Day is emblematic of his theatrical genius. I'm delighted to bring the play to life with DC luminary actors and designers."

The cast features Susan Rome as Suzanne, Eric Hissom as Don, Renee Wilson as Carina, Lilli Hokama as Meiko, Jonathan Feuer as Eli, and Julia Klavans as Winter and Suzanne Understudy.

Written before the pandemic but sharpened considerably by it, Eureka Day has only grown more relevant with time. Its central question — how do you build consensus when no one can agree on the truth? — feels as urgent now as ever, touching on themes of public health, personal freedom, institutional accountability, and the limits of civil discourse. Winner of the 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival following its acclaimed Broadway run, the play arrives in DC at precisely the right moment, at a theater with a deep connection to the playwright's own artistic roots.

Eureka Day runs March 11 through April 5, 2026, at Theater J at the Edlavitch DCJCC, 1529 16th St NW, Washington, DC.