Central Works Announces 'Central Works Script Club'

Central Works has paused its 30th season productions and remains focused on its mission to develop new plays. The company is announcing a new initiative: the Central Works Script Club, a book club with scripts. Each month the company takes a play from the Central Works catalog or a new script, makes it available to read, and invites the participants to send in questions for the playwright. A moderated interview with the writer and CW Resident Playwright, Patricia Milton, will be posted on the Central Works website (centralworks.org) on the final Tuesday of the month. The Central Works Script Club offering for June 2 is The Human Ounce by Nicole Parizeau Free and/or by Donation. On June 30, the online interview is uploaded w/participants' questions:

Visit centralworks.org/central-works-script-club or follow on Facebook or Twitter (#CWScriptClub).

Central Works 2020 Season was scheduled to run through November 15, 2020. Until CW is able to offer live productions safely in our performance space, the company continues to pursue expanded options that focus on new play development through the Central Works Writers Workshop and Central Works Method collaborative sessions with our artists. We will continue to provide updates for the rest of the season as we navigate through this unprecedented time.

Company co-directors Jan Zvaifler and Gary Graves remain steadfast in their mission to develop and produce new works. "New plays are the lifeblood of the theater," remarks Ms. Zvaifler. "We look at current events, politics, classic literature and traditional storytelling to bring our audience face to face with the challenges of our lives everyday, juxtaposed against the reflections of history, both recent and far-reaching. Given our current harrowing times, we all need an opportunity to pause, feel, think and act."

For three decades now Central Works has filled a special niche for theater artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, producing more new plays by local playwrights than any other company in the region. "The New Play Theater" utilizes three basic strategies: some are products of the Central Works Method, some are developed in the Central Works Writers Workshop, and some come to the company fully developed. Playwrights that have worked with the Central Works Method have included Christopher Chen, Lauren Gunderson, Aaron Loeb, Patricia Milton, Geetha Reddy, Ann Galjour, and Brian Thorstenson, to name a few.

The Central Works Writers Workshop is an ongoing commissioning program established in 2012. Twice a year, in 12-week sessions, 8 local playwrights are selected to develop projects through informal readings and carefully directed discussions. Last season, both Cristina García's The Lady Matador's Hotel and Patricia Milton's The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective emerged from this program, and two more Writers Workshop scripts are being produced this season. Central Works Method plays bring together writer, actors and director at the very outset of the playwriting process. In a supportive workshop environment, group research and collective brainstorming contributes to the entire development of the script.

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