Jonathan Spector is a playwright based in Oakland, California.

His play EUREKA DAY recently played The Old Vic in London (co-produced with Sonia Friedman Productions), starring Helen Hunt and Mark McKinney. It received a WhatsOnStage Award Nomination for Best New Play and was a Top Ten Play of 2022 in both The Spectator Magazine and The I-News. It premiered at Aurora Theater in Berkeley in 2018, where it won all of the San Francisco Bay Area’s New Play Awards: Glickman Award, Theater Bay Area Award, Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award, and Rella Lossy Award. It was subsequently produced in New York City with Colt Coeur where it was a New York Times “Critics’ Pick” and nominated for a NY Drama Critics Circle Award. It has been produced at Asolo Rep, Syracuse Stage, Mosaic Theater, InterAct, Burgtheater (The National Theater of Austria) and the State Theater of South Australia. He is adapting it as a feature film with Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video.

THIS MUCH I KNOW premiered at Aurora Theater and received the Edgerton Award, Glickman Award, and Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award. It will next be seen at London’s Hampstead Theater and Theater J in Washington DC. It was developed through the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, PlayPenn, New Harmony Project, Playwrights Center, and Manhattan Theater Club.

BEST AVAILABLE was a South Coast Rep Elizabeth George Commission, and developed through SCR, Ashland New Play Festival, Playwrights Center, and JAW at Portland Center Stage. It will premiere in May at Shotgun Players in Berkeley.

Other plays include GOOD. BETTER. BEST. BESTED. (Custom Made Theater, Bay Area Playwrights Festival), SEISTA KEY (Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Crowded Fire Matchbox Series), WHAT COMES NEXT (Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected) and IN FROM THE COLD (Just Theater, Global Age Prize).

Jonathan has been a MacDowell Colony fellow, a Playwrights Center Core Writer, a Playwrights Foundation Resident Playwright, a SPACE at Ryder Farm Creative Resident and received commissions from South Coast Rep, Roundabout Theater, Manhattan Theater Club, La Jolla Playhouse and Aurora Theater.

He was the long-time Co-Artistic Director of the Berkeley-based Just Theater, where his producing highlights include the Bay Area premieres of Rob Handel’s A Maze, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present… and Anne Washburn’s The Internationalist. He is also a former Literary Manager and Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights Foundation/Bay Area Playwrights Festival, where he supported the development of over 100 new plays by writers including Marcus Gardley, Samuel D. Hunter, Sheila Callaghan, Annie Baker, Lauren Yee, Jen Silverman, and Thomas Bradshaw.

Jonathan has taught theater and playwriting at San Jose State University, Sonoma State University, University of San Francisco, A.C.T., and his alma mater, the much-besieged New College of Florida.

In his misspent youth as an aspiring director in New York City, he was a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a frequent collaborator with The Civilians.

Jonathan is represented by CAA and Kaplan/Perrone.