Siesta Key

It’s Florida…sometime in the future. Violent militia rule is followed by violent resistance. Years later, the atrocities of this period are filtered through a rich cinematic lens and the distant memories of those perceived as perpetrators or victims  — in an attempt at revealing The Truth, and achieving reconciliation. Through shifting time, ambiguous TV-style interviews, and unreliable narrators, Siesta Key investigates the complexity of moral absolutism, its personal cost, and the elusiveness of truth in acts of hate.

Jonathan Spector on Siesta Key

“Right after the 2016 election, I read a lot about the Nazi occupation of France. I guess I thought that boning up on stories of resistance might prove useful. That led me down several rabbit holes – particularly an obsession with Marcel Ophuls’ documentaries ‘The Memory of Justice and The Sorrow and The Pity.’ Questions about time, memory and if it’s ever possible to hold people accountable in a just way were swirling in my head, and this play popped out all at once that spring.”

Jonathan Spector

Jonathan Spector is a playwright and based in Oakland, CA. His play Eureka Day premiered at Aurora Theater in Berkeley, and received all of the region’s new play awards: Glickman Award, Theatre Bay Area Award, San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award, and Rella Lossy Award. Other plays include Good. Better. Best. Bested. (Custom Made Theater, San Francisco), In From The Cold (Just Theater, Berkeley) and Repair The World.

He has developed work with Roundabout Theatre Company, South Coast Rep, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, Aurora Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, The Lark, Crowded Fire, San Francisco Playhouse, Custom Made Theatre, Mugwumpin, Source Theater Festival, Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Theatre of NOTE, Road Theatre, Something Marvelous Theatre, and Stanford’s National Center for New Plays.
Jonathan is a recipient of South Coast Rep’s Elizabeth George Commission, two-time winner of Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a former Resident Playwright at Playwrights Foundation, and was recently featured as one of “100 artists putting the East Bay on the map” by San Francisco Magazine. He is also the Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Just Theater. Upcoming: Eureka Day at Mosaic Theater (Washington, DC), InterAct Theatre (Philadelphia) and Spreckles Performing Arts Center (Sonoma).