THE MEDEA HYPOTHESIS Begins 5/31 in Berkeley

In modernizing an ancient Greek play about a woman who seeks revenge on her estranged husband by poisoning his new wife and murdering her own children, playwright Marian Berges has found a story that is at times touching, encouraging, and even a little funny.

"What drew me to Medea's story, I think, was that she's the opposite of what society envisions a mother to be," says playwright Marian Berges, "rather than nurturing and loving, she kills her own children as revenge against her husband for leaving her. She's the archetypal bad mother, and I wanted to dig a little deeper into why that would be."

Over the course of a 12-week session in the Central Works Writers Workshop, followed by a series of 4 workshops with the cast, designers and director, Berges reconfigured the tale to bring out the underlying cultural critique. In the updated play, Medea the sorceress and daughter of gods is transformed into "Em" - a successful New York fashion designer with a seemingly magical talent - who becomes increasingly unhinged dealing with a husband leaving her for a younger woman, a daughter becoming distant, a younger boyfriend with motives that remain unfathomable to her, and a father who no longer remembers her.

The play examines Em's story through the lens of Paleontologist Peter Ward's "Medea Hypothesis," which posits that the planet Earth, often conceived as the nurturing supermother Gaia (an idea first formulated by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis), is prone to mass extinction and, in fact, cares very little about the life on its surface.

"I wanted to explore this idea that motherhood is not something we have to accept as a biological imperative" explains Berges. "There's no innate knowledge or programming that kicks in that tells you how to be a good mother. I also wanted to look at the stage of a woman's life when we stop being a parent to our children, and our parents get older... Everyone starts to leave, and after having taught ourselves these traditional motherhood roles, a woman can start feeling a little lost."
Director Gary Graves agrees, "The way it's recounted by Euripedes, Medea comes off as this male fantasy of a scorned first wife - a storm of vengeance. We wanted to show Em in a more feminist light as more fleshed-out: to see her social and mental circumstances, and look at what would drive a woman to murder her children... or save them."

The production itself will feature three actors (Cory Cenosoprano, Joe Estlack and Jan Zvaifler) in a piece augmented with sound by Gregory Scharpen, costumes by Tammy Berlin, as well as innovative video by Pauline Luppert, through which the audience will see a number of characters interacting - including a few instances where one actor will play opposite himself in another pre-recorded role on video.
The Writers Workshop is a relatively new developmental program at Central Works, initiated last year. Eight writers are commissioned in the twice-yearly program. Those scripts selected for production are cast, and then go through a series of 4 workshops with the actors and production team. The Medea Hypothesis is the first script to come out of the Writers Workshop and go into production. Pitch Perfect, by Martin Edwards, will be the second, opening this summer in July. "We're producing a bumper crop of plays in the Writers Workshop this year," says Graves. "It has become an integral part of how we program our season, and helps us deliver on our mission to bring 100% new work to the stage."
Continuing its mission to develop and produce new works for the theater, Central Works uses its own style of collaborative play development to bring artists together as partners in creative projects from conception through to fully developed productions. 2012 marked the completion of the New Play Program, 2010-2012, developing and presenting 9 new plays in 3 years. At the close of its last season, Central Works had produced a total of 34 world premieres using the Central Works Method.

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