I’m sure many Upper Valley parents are well acquainted with the tedium of school board meetings, in which the desire to reach a consensus can often lead to hours of circuitous discussion.
“Eureka Day,” an incisive comedy now up at Shaker Bridge Theatre, imagines that kind of meeting in the extreme. Thursday’s show was full of jabs at liberal PC culture coupled with thoughtful and complex performances from a standout cast.
Set at Eureka Day School, a wealthy private school in Berkeley, Calif., the play opens during an executive committee meeting in the library where there are several bookshelves, including one marked “Social Justice.” Committee members are absorbed in an earnest conversation about whether to add the term “transracial adoptee” to the website’s dropdown menu of ethnic identities.
At Eureka Day, parents are generally discouraged from using gendered pronouns when referring to school children, even their own, and a previous year’s performance of “Peter Pan” was set in outer space in order to side step the original version’s problematic depiction of Indigenous and Native People.
It appears that all the committee members have drunk the Kool-Aid. Only Carina, a new parent at Eureka Day who formerly sent her child to public school, shows signs of skepticism.
Played with subtle obstinance by Jammie Patton, who directed last spring’s production of “Maytag Virgin” at Shaker Bridge, Carina often feels like the only voice of reason on a committee whose attempts at political correctness border on incoherence.
But for all their talk of inclusivity, it soon becomes clear that these parents aren’t as virtuous as they advertise. Eli (Jon Protas), a stay-at-home dad who made his fortune working in tech, is having a relationship with fellow committee member Meiko (Stephanie Jeane) that his wife seems tolerant of at best, though he claims the couple has transcended monogamy.
Meanwhile, Suzanne (Danielle Cohen) makes fervid attempts to include Carina, who is Black, only to voice the uncomfortable assumption that she must be using financial aid to cover the school’s steep tuition.
Eureka Day’s principal, Don, seems harmless enough, though his commitment to appearing non-confrontational often leaves him helpless amid the crossfire of parents’ strong opinions.
Emmy-award winning actor Gordon Clapp plays Don with just the right amount of stammering acquiescence, peppered with the occasional outburst when the endless back-and-forths become too much to bear.
That first committee meeting gives viewers the sense that discussions at Eureka Day follow a tiresome pattern: seemingly minor issues are debated with granular analysis and constant check-ins to make sure everyone knows their opinion is valid.
But it’s not long before an outbreak of mumps at school raises the stakes as the committee has to decide how best to proceed, including crafting a new vaccination policy.
The situation reveals parents’ divided views about vaccines, particularly when the committee opens up the discussion to the rest of the school in a virtual meeting. While committee members try to exude a sense of calm, the meeting is swiftly hijacked by incensed parents who turn to hurling insults at one another in the virtual chat, which is projected on a screen behind the actors.
There were many amusing moments in Thursday’s performance, but the chaos that ensued during that school-wide meeting was the funniest of all, with the audience’s laughter often drowning out the actors on stage.
As the play continued along, debates among committee members about how to proceed began to chafe against their earnest efforts at tolerance. Their arguing raised difficult questions about how to get along as a community when you can’t even agree on what views you hold, or what facts you believe in.
“Eureka Day” debuted in 2018 as an Aurora Theater Company commission in Berkeley, Calif., but there are obvious, almost prophetic, parallels to the coronavirus pandemic, when debates about bodily autonomy and the safety of vaccines exploded across the country.
I was also struck by how often committee members’ views were born out of concern for their children, as if their emotions determined the facts they chose to believe in. With that in mind, all the committee members, even the most taxing to listen to, reflected Meiko’s observation that “Most people in most places are basically trying to do the right thing.”
It’s this appeal to empathy that makes “Eureka Day” more than just a parody of progressive PC culture, as amusing as that is to watch, especially in a place like the Upper Valley.
Beneath the committee’s posturing is an earnest effort to build a community where consensus is a governing principle. How loyal they remain to that ideal when the decision at hand is about more than organic scones and school websites is for the audience to decide.
Shaker Bridge Theatre’s production of “Eureka Day” continues through Oct. 19 at Briggs Opera House in White River Junction. For tickets ($38-$45; $25 for people under age 35) and more information, visit shakerbridgetheatre.org or call 802-281-6848.
