Berkeley Production EUREKA DAY Given 2019 Glickman Award

Theatre Bay Area (TBA) is pleased to announce playwright Jonathan Spector and Aurora Theatre Company have been selected as the recipients of the prestigious 2019 Will Glickman Award for Eureka Day. Aurora Theatre produced the world premiere from April 13 to May 20, 2018, at the company's Alafi Auditorium in Berkeley.

Administered by Theatre Bay Area since 2004, TBA Executive Director will present the 2019 Glickman Award at TBA's Annual Conference on April 1 at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. Executive Director of TBA Brad Erickson says, "I am so thrilled to honor Jonathan Spector for his play Eureka Day. The play is so smart, funny, incisive and compassionate all at the same time - and so very Bay Area! And I'm delighted to honor the play's world premiere producer as well, the Aurora Theatre. The company's commitment to new works and to Bay Area artists makes Aurora a leader in our region."

The play is truly a homegrown project, being commissioned, set, developed, and ultimately produced in Berkeley. Playwright Spector shares, "It's especially meaningful to receive this Bay Area award for a play that is so deeply rooted in our community in every respect. I'm so grateful to the Aurora for taking a leap of faith with me on this piece - commissioning and supporting it every step of the way - at a time when I'd never had a play professionally produced."

Aurora Theatre Artistic Director Tom Ross adds, "I couldn't be happier for Jonathan that his frequently hilarious, acutely observed and ultimately moving script is receiving this great honor. And I couldn't be prouder that this, the first play to make its way out of our Originate + Generate theater development incubator, has been lauded by audiences, critics and now the Glickman panel. Here's to many more productions of Jonathan's brilliant skewering of Bay Area points of view."

This award is Eureka Day's second, having received the 2018 Rella Lossy Award. Administered by Theatre Bay Area, The Rella Lossy Award honors the memory of Rella Lossy, a lifelong lover and champion of the American theater and playwriting. It honors the best new script of a play by an emerging playwright that will premiere in the Bay Area in a given time period.

Eureka Day focuses on the anti-vaccine movement in the Bay Area and the very human effects of disagreeing about something so wide-reaching and so personal. At forward-thinking Eureka Day school, all decisions are made by consensus and everyone's opinion is valued. But when a crisis threatens their children's safety, it turns out that not everyone in the school community has the same definition of social justice. Now the board of directors must confront one of the central questions of our era: how do you find consensus when you can't agree on the facts? An incisive, poignant comedy of liberal manners, Eureka Day explores what it means when people of similar backgrounds, party affiliation, and education level hold the same worldviews but have such passionately and viciously opposing points of view about the health of our children.

Josh Costello, the production's director and Literary Manager/Artistic Associate at Aurora says, "Seeing Eureka Day receive this recognition is tremendously gratifying. Jonathan's writing holds the mirror up to our community with sharp wit and devastating precision; for me, this is theatre at its most vital and exciting. I'm so proud to have been a part of it.

ABOUT THE Will Glickman AWARD

Named after playwright Will Glickman (1910-83), the Glickman Award is chosen by a panel of top Bay Area theatre critics and is presented to both the playwright and the producing company. Established in 1984, The Will Glickman Award is presented annually to the author and producing company in honor of the best new play to premiere in the region; Theatre Bay Area has administered the award since 2004. The awardee is chosen by a panel of leading Bay Area critics. This year, the winner was selected by Bay Area theater critics Karen D'Souza (San Jose Mercury News), Sam Hurwitt (Bay Area News Group and Marin Independent Journal), Lily Janiak (San Francisco Chronicle), , and Jean Schiffman (San Francisco Examiner).

ABOUT JONATHAN SPECTOR

Jonathan Spector is a playwright and theatre-maker based in Oakland, CA. His plays EUREKA DAY (San Francisco Chronicle's 'Best Plays of 2018'), SIESTA KEY, GOOD. BETTER. BEST. BESTED., SEAS BETWEEN US BRAID, and IN FROM THE COLD have been produced and developed with Roundabout Underground (upcoming) Aurora Theatre, South Coast Rep, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark, Crowded Fire, San Francisco Playhouse, Custom Made Theatre, Mugwumpin, Source Theater Festival, Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Theatre of NOTE, Something Marvelous Theatre, and Stanford's National Center for New Plays.

ABOUT AURORA THEATRE COMPANY

Aurora Theatre Company invigorates audiences and artists through the shared experience of professional, intimate theatre. Its work, while entertaining, is more than entertainment as it challenges itself and its community to do better, think deeper, laugh louder, and cast wider nets of empathy toward the world. Through its productions of both classic and new works, we support the Bay Area community by hiring local artists and artisans and likewise support all forms of diversity both onstage and off.

ABOUT THEATRE BAY AREA

Theatre Bay Area is one of the largest regional performing arts service organizations in North America. Our members-some 300 theatre companies and 2,000 individual artists-produce thousands of performances and engage more than a million arts patrons each year. The Bay Area houses the third largest community of Actors' Equity (union) actors and boasts more theatre companies per capita than any other metropolitan area in the U.S.

Theatre Bay Area is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to unite, strengthen, promote and advance the theatre community in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on behalf of our conviction that the performing arts are an essential public good, critical to a healthy and truly democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth. Visit theatrebayarea.org for more information.

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