Study Guide Contents
Robert M. Hupp Artistic Director Syracuse Stage
3.) Letter from the Education Team
Melissa Crespo Associate Artistic Director Syracuse Stage
4.) Production Information 5.)
Jill Anderson Managing Director Syracuse Stage
About the Playwright
6.) Synopsis 7.) Characters 9.) Julia Morgan 10.) Mumps in the US 11.) Private School History in the US 12.) Discussion Questions 13.) Elements of Drama 14.) Elements of Design 15.) References
Director of Community Engagement & Education Joann Yarrow (315) 443-1150
Assistant Director of Education Kate Laissle (315) 442-7755
Community Engagement & Education Coordinator Theorri London (315) 443-1150
Group Sales & Student Matinees Tracey White (315) 443-9844
Box Office (315) 443-3275
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Dear Educator, The best way of learning is learning while you’re having fun. Theatre provides the opportunity for us to connect with more than just our own story, it allows us to find ourselves in other people’s lives and grow beyond our own boundaries. While times are different, we still are excited to share with you new theatrical pieces through pre-recorded means. We’re the only species on the planet who makes stories. It is the stories that we leave behind that define us. Giving students the power to watch stories and create their own is part of our lasting impact on the world. And the stories we choose to hear and learn from now are even more vital. Stories bring us together, even when we must stay apart. Stories are our connection to the world and each other. We invite you and your students to engage with the stories we tell as a starting point for you and them to create their own. Sincerely, Joann Yarrow, Kate Laissle, and Theorri London Community Engagement and Education Team
2021/2022 EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH SPONSORS Syracuse Stage is committed to providing students with rich theatre experiences that explore and examine what it is to be human. Research shows that children who participate in or are exposed to the arts show higher academic achievement, stronger self-esteem, and improved ability to plan and work toward a future goal. Many students in our community have their first taste of live theatre through Syracuse Stage’s outreach programs. Last season more than 15,500 students from across New York State attended or participated in the Bank of America Children’s Tour, artsEmerging, the Young Playwrights Festival, Backstory, Young Adult Council, and/or our Student Matinee Program. We gratefully acknowledge the corporations and foundations who support our commitment to in-depth arts education for our community.
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PRESENTS
Eureka Day BY
Jonathan Spector DIRECTED BY
Robert Hupp COSTUME & SCENIC DESIGNER
LIGHTING DESIGNER
SOUND DESIGNER
PROJECTION DESIGNER
ASSOCIATE PROJECTION DESIGNER
Junghyun Georgia Lee
Dawn Chiang
Jacqueline Herter
Lisa Renkel
Brian Pacelli
ASST. COSTUME DESIGNER
ASST. SCENIC DESIGNER
STUDENT ASST.LIGHTING DESIGNER
STUDENT ASST. DIRECTOR
Ilana Breitman
Riw Rakkulchon
Eli Golding
Kayla Addison
STAGE MANAGER
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
STAGE MANAGEMENT INTERN
INTIMACY COORDINATOR
DRAMATURGICAL CONSULTANT
Stuart Plymesser
Em Piraino
Annie Meng
Teniece Divya Johnson
Kathryn L. Kelly
DRAMATURGICAL CONSULTANT
DRAMATURGICAL CONSULTANT
CEO BLACK CUB PRODUCTIONS
COO BLACK CUB PRODUCTIONS
Gwen Webber-McLeod
Dr. Amy Tucker
Eric Derachio Jackson
Mylz Blake
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About the Plawright Jonathan Spector is playwright and screenwriter based in Oakland, California. His play Eureka Day premiered at Aurora Theater in Berkeley, California, where it received all of the San Francisco Bay Area’s new play awards: Glickman Award, Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award, Theater Bay Area Award, and Rella Lossy Award. It was subsequently produced by Colt Coeur where it was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, an “Honorable Mention” in Time Out New York’s ‘Best Plays of 2019’ list, and nominated for a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It has been or will be produced by InterAct Theater, Mosaic Theater, Asolo Theater, Syracuse Stage, Spreckles Theater and the State Theater of South Australia. Jonathan’s play This Much I Know will premiere next year at Aurora Theater, and was developed in the Playwrights Center’s Ruth Easton Series, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, New Harmony Project, and Playwrights Foundation’s Rough Reading Series. Other plays include Good. Better. Best. Bested. (Custom Made Theater, Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Siesta Key (Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Crowded Fire Matchbox Series), What Comes Next (Portland Stage’s Little Festival of The Unexpected, SF PlayGround Festival) and In From The Cold (Just Theater, Aurora Theater’s Global Age Prize). He has written two audio dramas: The Flats (Aurora Theater, co-written with Lauren Gunderson and Cleavon Smith) and Owner Occupy (Playing On Air). Jonathan is a recipient of South Coast Rep’s Elizabeth George Commission, and has been a MacDowell Fellow, a PlayPenn Haas Fellow, an Ithaca College New Voices Fellow, a Resident Playwright at Playwrights Foundation, and is currently a Core Writer at The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. He is Co-Artistic Director of Just Theater and a former Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights Foundation/Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He has taught at San Jose State University, Sonoma State University, A.C.T Studio, Berkeley Rep School of Theater and his alma mater, New College of Florida.
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Synopsis The Eureka Day private school is a Berkeley, California elementary school that values social justice, diversity, and pure consensus. Don, Eli, Suzanne, and Meiko are all members of the school’s executive committee, and at the start of the play, they are welcoming a new member, Carina. During this first meeting, the executive committee discusses the issue of racial identification options for students on the school’s website. This is a difficult conversation for the committee, but they eventually reach an agreement. The next executive committee meeting is an emergency meeting called by Don. A student has contracted mumps, which means the school will be closed and in quarantine until the infection subsides. A letter from the California Department of Health arrives at the school, and it recommends vaccination for all students. The committee must decide on what is to be done about the letter from the Department of Health and what are the next steps for the school. The rest of the play is an exploration of when facts, opinions, and beliefs are suppressed or amplified in the name of consensus or for the good of the community.
Interesting Fact:
An interesting thing to note about this play, it was commissioned by Aurora Theater in 2016, which was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there are many interesting parallels between the play and our current climate, it was written several years before.
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Characters For contemporary plays, some costume designers prefer to create mood boards instead of traditional costume renderings. Mood boards are a visual representation of the look of each character in the show, but they do not show specific costume pieces. They give the costume team a general feel for how each character should look, which informs which pieces the team pulls for each character to wear. Costume Design and Moodboards by Junghyun Georgia Lee
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Characters
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Julia Morgan The set design for Eureka Day is inspired by the architecture of Julia Morgan. Julia Morgan was the first woman in California to earn an architecture license. She worked as an architect for over 40 years and designed over 800 buildings, most of them located in California. Her most famous work is the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.
Riverside Art Musuem
Press photo of Merrill Hall courtesy Asilomar Conference Grounds website. Crocker Dining Hall
Chapel of the Chimes Neptune Pool (Hearst Castle)
Julia Morgan School for Girls YWCA Laniakea
Asilomar Chapel
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Mumps in the US Mumps is caused by a virus from the genus Rubulavirus. Symptoms include low-grade fever, respiratory problems, and swelling of the parotid glands, which are glands behind the ear that aid in producing saliva, chewing, swallowing, and speaking. This swelling is known as parotitis and is the most easily recognizable symptom of mumps. However, parotitis only occurs in about 30-40% of cases. Other cases present with non-specific symptoms, and 20% of individuals may be asymptomatic. The virus is spread by respiratory droplets that become airborne when a person coughs, sneezes, and talks. In 1968, 52,000 cases of mumps were reported in the US. After the introduction of the vaccine, cases begin to decrease, and by 1985, less than 3,000 cases were reported each year. There was an uptick of mumps cases in 1987, so a second shot was added to the vaccine schedule. Cases of mumps have dropped in the United States by 99% since then, but the disease has not been eliminated. Since 2006, several large outbreaks have occurred, and in 2019, mumps cases were reported in almost every state. Photo courtesy of DoctorsAustralia
Mumps can be a mild disease, but complications due to the disease are not extremely rare. In 30% of cases in unvaccinated males that have passed puberty, orchitis can develop, which is swelling in one or both testicles. This can also include tenderness, nausea, and vomiting. Other possible complications include hearing loss, swelling of the breast, pancreas, or brain. Complications are more common in unvaccinated adults. After the development of vaccines, the rates of complications due to mumps have gone down to 1%.
Vaccines The live attenuated mumps vaccine used today in the United States was licensed in 1967. It was developed by vaccine researcher Maurice Hillman. He isolated the virus from his daughter, Jeryl Lynn, who was diagnosed with mumps at age 5. The strain of virus used in the vaccine today is referred to as the Jeryl Lynn strain. The mumps vaccine was combined with the measles vaccine in 1971 to create the MMR vaccine. Syracuse Stage Education 10
Private School History in the US The first schools in the United States were private. Education was haphazard across the country, and schooling was available for a select few. Schools depended on tuition from parents, donations, and sometimes support from local governments. In the 19th century, public schools began to spread across the United States. As the number of public schools grew, private schools began to be associated with class and religious organizations. Elite private schools in the United States began modeling themselves after the elite private schools in England: Eton and Harrow. The South was slower in establishing public schools across the region, but by the 1940s, public schools were widespread. However, also in the 1940s, southern White students started to move to private schools to avoid integration. After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, which banned segregation in public schools, state and local governments across the South established tuition voucher programs that were used to shut down public schools, rather than desegregate. In 1964, Griffin v. School Board of Prince Edward County was brought to the Supreme Court. In Prince Edward County, Virginia. the local officials refused to collect taxes to fund integrated public schools. They instead opened whites-only private schools that were funded by tuition grants. The public schools in the county were closed for five years and left African American students with little means for education. This approach was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but it provided a model for local and state governments across the South and the country. (above) Collegiate School, the oldest operating private school in the United States
Today, private schools follow a variety of models and are formed by a plethora of organizations. A private school can be a small school formed by a religious organization with mostly low-income students, an elite prep school that funnels students to Ivy League colleges, or a tiny school that encourages students to write their curriculum. However, across the board, private schools are still lacking in racial and economic diversity. About one in four private school students are white, and students from low-income families make up about 9% of private school enrollment. Syracuse Stage Education 11
Discussion Questions 1. What are the social and political issues presented in the play? 2. How effective is Eureka Day at exploring different points of view? 3. How do you have effective and respectful conversations when people have differing opinions or perspectives? 4. Are all opinions equally important in every discussion? 5. Do you think a pure consensus is an effective way to come to a decision? 6. Do you think a pure consensus is always possible? 7. Did any character surprise you during the play? 8. Did you have a specific character you were rooting for? 9. How did the set help define the time period and setting of the play? 10. What did the costumes tell you about each character? 11. What did you like about live theatre?
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elements of drama PLOT
What is the story line? What happened before the play started? What does each character want? What do they do to achieve their goals? What do they stand to gain/lose? THEME
What ideas are wrestled with in the play? What questions does the play pose? Does it present an opinion? CHARACTER
Who are the people in the story? What are their relationships? Why do they do what they do? How does age/status/etc. affect them? LANGUAGE
What do the characters say? How do they say it? When do they say it? MUSIC
How do music and sound help to tell the story? SPECTACLE
How do the elements come together to create the whole performance?
Any piece of theatre comprises multiple art forms. As you explore this production with your students, examine the use of:
WRITING VISUAL ART/DESIGN MUSIC/SOUND DANCE/MOVEMENT
INQUIRY
How are each of these art forms used in this production? Why are they used? How do they help to tell the story?
ACTIVITY
At its core, drama is about characters working toward goals and overcoming obstacles. Ask students to use their bodies and voices to create characters who are: very old, very young, very strong, very weak, very tired, very energetic, very cold, very warm. Have their characters interact with others. Give them an objective to fulfill despite environmental obstacles. Later, recap by asking how these obstacles affected their characters and the pursuit of their objectives.
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elements of design LINE can have length, width, texture, direction and
curve. There are five basic varieties: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, zig-zag, and curved.
SHAPE is two-dimensional and encloses space.
It can be geometric (e.g. squares and circles), man-made, or free-form.
FORM is three-dimensional. It encloses space
and fills space. It can be geometric (e.g. cubes and cylinders), man-made, or free-form. TEXTURE refers to the “feel” of an COLOR has three basic properties:
HUE is the name of the color (e.g. red, blue, green), INTENSITY is the strength of the color (bright or dull), VALUE is the range of lightness to darkness.
object’s surface. It can be smooth, rough, soft, etc. Textures may be ACTUAL (able to be felt) or IMPLIED (suggested visually through the artist’s technique).
SPACE is defined and determined
by shapes and forms. Positive space is enclosed by shapes and forms, while negative space exists around them.
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References Ee, Jongyeon, et al. “Private Schools in American Education: A Small Sector Still Lagging in Diversity — the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.” Civilrightsproject.ucla. edu, 5 Mar. 2018, civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/private-schools-in-american-education-a-small-sector-still-lagging-in-diversity. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021. Jr, Peter W. Cookson and. “New Kid on the Block? A Closer Look at America’s Private Schools.” Brookings, 1 Dec. 1997, www.brookings.edu/articles/new-kid-onthe-block-a-closer-look-at-americas-private-schools/. Kober, Nancy. Before Public Schools History and Evolution of Public Education in the US. 2020. Lange, Alexandra. “Overlooked No More: Julia Morgan, Pioneering Female Architect.” The New York Times, 6 Mar. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/ obituaries/julia-morgan-overlooked.html Marlow, Mariel, et al. “Pinkbook.” CDC, 2019, www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/mumps.html. “Mumps | History of Vaccines.” Historyofvaccines.org, 2012, www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles/mumps. Pierce, Raymond. “The Racist History of ‘School Choice.’” Forbes, 6 May 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-schoolchoice/?sh=13e9697f6795. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021. The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Julia Morgan | American Architect.” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Julia-Morgan.
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