Playwright Jonathan Spector

Jonathan Spector, the award-winning, Oakland-based playwright of ‘Eureka Day,’ playing through September 22 at Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center, will be attending this Saturday evening’s performance of his award-winning comedy-drama. Spector has recently returned from New York City, where ‘Eureka Day’ – which premiered last year at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre – had its East Coast premiere just days before Spreckels launched its North Bay premiere on August 30. Spector will be taking questions from the audience following the show.

The play was named one of the top 10 new American plays by the New York Times, and last year was awarded Best New Play by the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Spector is the author of “Good. Better. Best. Bested,” which premiered at San Francisco’s Custom Made Theater, “In From the Cold,” staged at Just Theatre in Berkeley, and has developed additional plays with several other companies.

Spreckels production of “Eureka Day,” directed by Elizabeth Craven and featuring Jeff Coté, was awarded a “Go See” designation by the SFBATCC, and has received strong reviews from many Bay Area critics, including the North Bay Bohemian and North Bay Stage and Screen‘s own Harry Duke, who gave the production five stars and described one particular highlight scene as “brilliantly scripted, gut-bustingly funny.”

The play takes place before, during and after a mumps outbreak has temporarily shut down a liberal preschool in Berkeley, where social media platforms like Facebook have thrown the usually uber-woke parents into escalating paroxysms of bad online behavior.

Spector is co-artistic director of Berkeley’s Just Theater, called “(one of) the Bay Area’s most exciting small theater companies” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Lily Janiak.

[‘Eureka Day’ runs through Sept. 22 at Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Friday – Saturday, 7:30pm; Sunday, 2pm; Thursday, Sep 19, 7:30pm. $12 – $26. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com]