PLAYS
PRODUCED WORKS
EUREKA DAY (3W, 2M)
At Eureka Day School in Berkeley, all decisions are made by consensus, diversity of opinion is valued, and vaccinations are a personal matter. When a mumps outbreak hit the school, it turns out that not everyone in the community has the same definition of social justice. Now the board of directors must confront the central question of our time: how do find consensus when you can’t agree on the facts?
Commission: Aurora Theater, Berkeley
Productions: Aurora Theatre, Berkeley; Colt Coeur, NYC; InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia; Mosaic Theatre, Washington DC ,Spreckles Theatre Company, Sonoma.
Readings: South Coast Rep, Roundabout Theatre Company
Honors/Awards: Will Glickman Award for Best Play to Premiere in the SF Bay Area; Rella Lossy Playwriting Award; Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding World Premiere Play, Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award.
"The perfect play for our age of disagreement...[Eureka Day] is not only one of the funniest plays to open this year, it is one of the saddest." Ben Brantley, New York Times (Critics' Pick)
"So brilliantly yoked to the current American moment—its flighty politics, its deadly folly—that it makes you want to jump out of your skin...I’m still trying to figure out how hard is appropriate for a critic to laugh at the theatre; this night, I made myself hoarse." - Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker
"Jonathan Spector's play is so crisply defined that you might have to periodically remind yourself that you haven't already met these characters in real life...Spector proves as much as master of pathos as of comedy - Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle (Highest Rating)
At Eureka Day School in Berkeley, all decisions are made by consensus, diversity of opinion is valued, and vaccinations are a personal matter. When a mumps outbreak hit the school, it turns out that not everyone in the community has the same definition of social justice. Now the board of directors must confront the central question of our time: how do find consensus when you can’t agree on the facts?
Commission: Aurora Theater, Berkeley
Productions: Aurora Theatre, Berkeley; Colt Coeur, NYC; InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia; Mosaic Theatre, Washington DC ,Spreckles Theatre Company, Sonoma.
Readings: South Coast Rep, Roundabout Theatre Company
Honors/Awards: Will Glickman Award for Best Play to Premiere in the SF Bay Area; Rella Lossy Playwriting Award; Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding World Premiere Play, Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award.
"The perfect play for our age of disagreement...[Eureka Day] is not only one of the funniest plays to open this year, it is one of the saddest." Ben Brantley, New York Times (Critics' Pick)
"So brilliantly yoked to the current American moment—its flighty politics, its deadly folly—that it makes you want to jump out of your skin...I’m still trying to figure out how hard is appropriate for a critic to laugh at the theatre; this night, I made myself hoarse." - Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker
"Jonathan Spector's play is so crisply defined that you might have to periodically remind yourself that you haven't already met these characters in real life...Spector proves as much as master of pathos as of comedy - Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle (Highest Rating)
GOOD. BETTER. BEST. BESTED. (4M, 2W)
A one-night journey down the Las Vegas strip, an interwoven story of bachelorettes, magicians, street performers, gamblers, and tourists. As the nighttime festivities get under way, an earth-shattering event happens half a world away. In the midst of this tragedy and the chaos it unleashes, the characters must reckon with how much to let it disturb their good time.
Premiere: June 2018 at Custom Made Theater, San Francisco
Workshop: 2016 Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Readings: San Francisco Playhouse, Theatre of NOTE
"It’s an entertaining, fast-moving, emotional roller coaster of a production, shifting effectively between episodes eliciting side-splitting laughter, serious reflection, shock, and horror, all punctuated by an uneasy sense of sadness and despair that looms over even some of the most awkward and laugh-out-loud moments in this multi-dimensional comedy...Spector has crafted his characters with empathy and depth"
- Nicole Singley, Aisle Seat Review
A one-night journey down the Las Vegas strip, an interwoven story of bachelorettes, magicians, street performers, gamblers, and tourists. As the nighttime festivities get under way, an earth-shattering event happens half a world away. In the midst of this tragedy and the chaos it unleashes, the characters must reckon with how much to let it disturb their good time.
Premiere: June 2018 at Custom Made Theater, San Francisco
Workshop: 2016 Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Readings: San Francisco Playhouse, Theatre of NOTE
"It’s an entertaining, fast-moving, emotional roller coaster of a production, shifting effectively between episodes eliciting side-splitting laughter, serious reflection, shock, and horror, all punctuated by an uneasy sense of sadness and despair that looms over even some of the most awkward and laugh-out-loud moments in this multi-dimensional comedy...Spector has crafted his characters with empathy and depth"
- Nicole Singley, Aisle Seat Review
IN FROM THE COLD (4M, 1 W)
A Cold War Spy's past may not be past after all, the secret meaning of 80's movies is revealed, and it's Ladies' Night at Chilis'. A play about what it means when you used to mean a lot, and now you may not mean much anymore.
Premiere: Just Theater, Berkeley 2014
Winner: Aurora Theater's Global Age Prize 2013
Reading: Aurora Theater
Reading: Playwrights Foundation's Rough Reading Series
Finalist: O’Neill Playwrights Conference 2013, New Harmony Conference 2013, LARK playwrights’ Week 2013
"Sometimes you can tell that a production will be good from the opening moment...the play is firing on all cylinders."
- Jean Schiffman, San Francisco Examiner
THIS IS ALL I NEED
(co-written with Liz Lisle and Christopher Ward White)
This Is All I Need untangles and retangles the threads connecting our hearts, our anxieties, and our stuff, exploring the ways that our belongings become physical repositories for our most potent memories, to the fine boundaries between collecting and hoarding, to the psychosocial motors driving the contemporary urge to accumulate.
Premiered with Mugwumpin, San Francisco, 2010
Workshopped in the Fury Factor, San Francisco, 2009
Named one of the best plays of the year by both the San Francisco Weekly and San Francisco Bay Guardian.
THE VAST EXPANSE (short)
(formerly titled Be What You Wish to Seem)
Bored with your life? Maybe it's time to change it up. Get a new job, move to a new city, or maybe consider becoming a Ficus tree?
Premiered at Source Theater Festival, Washington DC 2013
Productions: Something Marvelous, Chicago 2015, St. Bonaventure College, 2014, San Francisco State University, 2014, The Bentley School, 2015
NASTY, BRUTISH AND SHORT (short)
There’s no electricity, lines of communication have been severed and society is collapsing around us, but we’ve with seven post-graduate degrees between the five of us, surely we can get this thing figured out.
Premiered at Source Theater Festival, Washington DC 2014
Produced by Breach Once More, San Francisco, 2016
(formerly titled Be What You Wish to Seem)
Bored with your life? Maybe it's time to change it up. Get a new job, move to a new city, or maybe consider becoming a Ficus tree?
Premiered at Source Theater Festival, Washington DC 2013
Productions: Something Marvelous, Chicago 2015, St. Bonaventure College, 2014, San Francisco State University, 2014, The Bentley School, 2015
NASTY, BRUTISH AND SHORT (short)
There’s no electricity, lines of communication have been severed and society is collapsing around us, but we’ve with seven post-graduate degrees between the five of us, surely we can get this thing figured out.
Premiered at Source Theater Festival, Washington DC 2014
Produced by Breach Once More, San Francisco, 2016
IN DEVELOPMENT
SEISTA KEY
It's Florida...sometime in the future. Violent militia rule is followed by violent resistance. Years later, atrocities of this period are filtered through a cinematic lens and the distant memories of the perceived victims, revealing ambiguous and unreliable truths.
Workshop: Crowded Fire Theatre Matchbox Series, 2017
Workshop: Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2019
It's Florida...sometime in the future. Violent militia rule is followed by violent resistance. Years later, atrocities of this period are filtered through a cinematic lens and the distant memories of the perceived victims, revealing ambiguous and unreliable truths.
Workshop: Crowded Fire Theatre Matchbox Series, 2017
Workshop: Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2019
THIS MUCH I KNOW
In which Stalin's daughter, the plight of accidental killers and the work of Nobel-prize winning pyschologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky create and interwoven exploration of how much we are responsible for the things we do.
Development: New Harmony Project 2020, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor 2017
Reading: Just Theater New Play Lab, 2018
In which Stalin's daughter, the plight of accidental killers and the work of Nobel-prize winning pyschologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky create and interwoven exploration of how much we are responsible for the things we do.
Development: New Harmony Project 2020, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor 2017
Reading: Just Theater New Play Lab, 2018
WHAT COMES NEXT. (3W, 2M)
Set in the Sea Ranch community on the Sonoma Coast, this is a play about about not being the person people remember you as being, and about the sneaky, creepy influence of technology on our lives. And about Jews.
Workshop: PlayGround Festival, 2019
Reading: Just Theater New Play Lab 2016, San Francisco Playhouse 2017
Set in the Sea Ranch community on the Sonoma Coast, this is a play about about not being the person people remember you as being, and about the sneaky, creepy influence of technology on our lives. And about Jews.
Workshop: PlayGround Festival, 2019
Reading: Just Theater New Play Lab 2016, San Francisco Playhouse 2017
ADULT SWIM (3M, 2W)
A magic realistic play in which a pair of teenage lifeguards struggle to unwrap the mysteries of life during in a hot, slow summer amongst bratty kids, killer ping pong and lots of whistle-twirling.
Commission: PlayGround, San Francisco
Workshop: 2014 PlayGround Festival
Finalist: O’Neill Playwrights Conference, 2015, Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2015
A magic realistic play in which a pair of teenage lifeguards struggle to unwrap the mysteries of life during in a hot, slow summer amongst bratty kids, killer ping pong and lots of whistle-twirling.
Commission: PlayGround, San Francisco
Workshop: 2014 PlayGround Festival
Finalist: O’Neill Playwrights Conference, 2015, Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2015