Central Works Script Club July to Feature Cristina García: THE LADY MATADOR'S HOTEL

Central Works new initiative: the Central Works Script Club, is a monthly book club for plays. The Script Club offering for July is from the sensual world of writer Cristina García, The Lady Matador's Hotel. Cristina García, author of a past season's hit adaptation King of Cuba returned to Central Works in 2019 to adapt another of her popular novels.

The Lady Matador's Hotel follows the denizens of a luxurious hotel in the capital of an unnamed Central American country in the midst of political turmoil. There is the matadora in town for a bullfight. There is an ex-guerrilla now working as a waitress in the hotel. And there is a colonel who committed atrocities in the country's long civil war. Each day, the pull of revenge and desire draws them closer and closer together.

For the Central Works Script Club, the company takes a play from the Central Works catalog or a new script each month, makes it available to read, and invites the participants to send in questions for the playwright. A podcast of the writer in conversation with CW Resident Playwright, Patricia Milton, will be posted on the Central Works website (centralworks.org) on the final Tuesday of July (7/28). Join CW for a thrilling script read and the opportunity to send in questions for the playwright; then listen to a moderated conversation with Cristina García and Patricia Milton when the online interview is posted on July 28. Free and/or by Donation. Visit centralworks.org/central-works-script-club or follow on Facebook or Twitter (#CWScriptClub).

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, Cristina García's The Lady Matador's Hotel and Patricia Milton's The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective emerged from this program. For more information, visit our website: www.centralworks.org

Cristina García (playwright) has been developing new plays and stage adaptations of her novels in the Central Works Writers Workshop for the past 3 years. She is playwright-in-residence at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco. Her first produced plays, KIng of Cuba I and The Lady Mataodr's Hotel were part of Central Works 2018 and 2019 seasons. García is the author of seven novels, including: Dreaming in Cuban (now in development as a play in the Central Works Writers Workshop), The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador's Hotel, King of Cuba, and Here in Berlin. García has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. Two works for young readers, The Dog Who Loved the Moon, and I Wanna Be Your Shoebox were published in 2008 and a young adult novel, Dreams of Significant Girls, in 2011. A collection of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, was published in 2010. García's work has been a finalist for a National Book Award and has been translated into fourteen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. She is the founder and artistic director of Las Dos Brujas Writers' Workshops and lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

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. For more information, visit our website: www.centralworks.org

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