PASADENA, Calif. — The debate over vaccines is raging, from the halls of Congress and school board meetings to the Pasadena Playhouse — which opens its new season with “Eureka Day.”
In the 2025 Tony-winning play, Camille Chen plays one of the parents who serves on the executive board of a progressive private school in Berkeley, California. She’s also a mom in real life who has put in her fair share of hours at PTA meetings.
“I know every single one of these parents,” she said. “And there are a lot of strong opinions and unsolicited advice about how you should raise your kid.”
Opinions are flying as fast as her knitting needles in the fictional school that suddenly finds itself amid a mumps outbreak. And although the play was actually written before COVID, it’s even more timely now.
In the past few weeks while rehearsals were underway in Pasadena, the FDA approved new guidelines for updated COVID-19 vaccines — narrowing the field for who could get the shots. Also, Florida became the first state to announce plans to eliminate childhood vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, the CDC reports over 1,400 confirmed cases of measles across the country — a disease that was officially eliminated from the U.S. in 2000.
“Yeah, there isn’t a more contemporary, more compelling play politically,” actor Nate Corddry said.
Or a funnier one — “Eureka Day” is a sharp satire, but he’s quick to point out that no one person or position is the punchline.
“None of these characters are sort of cartoons,” Corrdry said. “They all come from very earnest, honest places, and all of their points are well defended. So we’re not really laughing at them for their point of view. I think we’re laughing at them at times because they are really passionate and sometimes aren’t aware of the people around them at times.”
“It’s extremely funny and it is also not a mean-spirited play,” added actor Mia Barron. “Its point is not to destroy these people, but to understand how everyone sacrifices, maybe their own ethics when it comes to what they think is best for their children.”
While there are many arguments made in the course of the show, actor Cherisse Booth says the play isn’t setting out to change anyone’s mind. That’s tricky territory. But she does think injecting humor might make all sides a little more open to each other’s ideas.
“I think using humor to soften and massage very spicy topics is a really smart way to allow people to be in the same room together and to be able to listen to each other,” she said. “Because sometimes if we go at it dead-on, with a lot of fervor and anger and some of the heavier emotions, people tend to be able to shut off very easily.”
“Everything should be addressed through humor,” actor Rick Holmes agreed. “When we get people laughing at themselves, I think we open the door to like, maybe a bit of a dialog.”
The parents in the show may not always be the best behaved — especially when expressing themselves in the chat room during a Zoom meeting — but the bottom line, Chen says, is that on stage and off, everyone just wants what’s best for their children.
“When it comes to your kid, you feel like you have to commit to your choices, to not feel like you don’t know what you’re doing,” she admitted. “Because we really don’t know what we’re doing.”
A dose of reality that can be difficult to remember amid strong feelings and lengthy PTA meetings.
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