Viral Conversations

Jennifer Dean and Dr. Peter Hotez in a post-show conversation. Photo by Gabriel Velazquez.

This week, 4th Wall had the honor of hosting Dr. Peter Hotez for a special performance of Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector. Before the show, Dr. Hotez signed copies of his new book “Science Under Siege,” and afterwards, sat down for a cross-disciplinary conversation with my colleague Jennifer Dean, the director of Eureka Day and our Artistic Director here at 4th Wall.

In the play Eureka Day, a mumps outbreak at a private school incites a vaccine debate among the parents. But Eureka Day is not a “vaccine play.” Or, at least it wasn’t intended to be when it was first written in 2018. When the playwright Jonathan Spector penned this story seven years ago, he chose a niche conversation to illustrate his broader question: How do we find consensus when no one can agree on the truth?

Flash forward to 4th Wall’s current production, and Spector’s broader question still holds weight; perhaps more so since the specific catalyst for the action in his story feels as if it were taken fresh from today's headlines. For this post-COVID production, premiering regionally in a red state and a blue city just a stone’s throw from the largest medical complex in the world, I don’t think we can honestly claim at this point that our production isn’t a “vaccine play.”

Theatre is like a virus. It exists in the grey area between living and nonliving things. The words in a play script cannot be changed - they sit lifeless on the page. But given the opportunity, they can infect the hearts and minds of their hosts. It is the artist and the audience that bring theatre to life. An extraordinary theatre infection chips away at our defenses until we see ourselves as indistinguishable from the strangers on stage.

My educational background is in the sciences. In college, I majored in biochemistry and cell biology, minored in global health technologies, and competed with our school’s synthetic biology club. It was a special privilege for me to collaborate on this event with Dr. Hotez, whose work I first encountered in a neglected tropical diseases course at Rice. I am equally inspired by his scientific work and by his public advocacy. Dr. Hotez takes very seriously the responsibility of amplifying scientists’ voices in our noisy culture.

If you’ve seen Eureka Day, you’ll remember the infamous Zoom scene. Amongst the 144 chat comments in the script, only 6 are from the character identified as a medical expert, one of the parents at the school who is also a pediatrician. As the play so brilliantly demonstrates, when 96% of the conversation is dominated by people who are emotional, reactive, and scared, regardless of which side of the debate they might identify with, chaos ensues. I am grateful for scientists like Dr. Hotez who enter bravely into the chat, time and time again, in pursuit of the greater good and in pursuit of the truth.

Thank you to everyone who attended this special evening. Thankfully for 4th Wall, even Dr. Hotez hasn’t found a way to immunize people against viral, mind-altering, heart-expanding, extraordinary theatre experiences.