The Comedy WONDERLAND Opens Central Works 2019 Season

Central Works 2019 Season of 4 world premiere plays begins February 16 and runs through November 24, 2019. Wonderland, a Kafka-esque comedy by Gary Graves, launches the 29th season opening on Saturday Feb 16 at 7pm and running through March 17 (Previews Feb 14 & 15 at 8pm).

In Wonderland, someone must have recommended Joseph Kaye, for one morning, without having done anything to deserve it, he was summoned to a place that looks an awful lot like the White House. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know who summoned him. He's just a bank teller at National Savings and Trust. Why him? Some very sinister things begin happening as he waits anxiously for someone named "A." Is that a code name? He doesn't know. There's a "Rabbit" and a "Duchess" and a "Red Queen," too. Something curious is going on here...curiouser and curiouser. Joseph just wants to go home. But that's not so easy when you're down the rabbit hole, and through the looking glass.

Lewis Carroll meets Franz Kafka in Wonderland. Directed by Jan Zvaifler, Wonderland features a cast that includes Martha Brigham*, John Patrick Moore*, Kimberly Ridgeway and Clive Worsley (*member AEA). The production has costume design by Tammy Berlin, lighting design by Gary Graves, prop design by Debbie Shelley and sound design Gregory Scharpen, with stage management by Carolina Stevens.

Committed to new works inspired by social issues, classic texts and history, Central Works continues its 2019 season in the spring with a new mystery set in London, where a series of gruesome murders have occurred - is Jack the Ripper at it again? A trio of unlikely detectives take it upon themselves to solve the mystery in The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective by award-winning local playwright, Patricia Milton (May 4-Jun 2). Then, in the full glare of summer, a happily married lesbian couple must confront questions that they never thought to ask as their domestic lives suddenly collide with national security, in Christina Gorman's political thriller, Roan @ The Gates (Jul 20-Aug 18). The season culminates with a new work by the prize-winning novelist Cristina García, which follows last season's sensational theatrical adaptation of her own novel "King of Cuba" with a new adaption, The Lady Matador's Hotel (Oct 12-Nov 10). The play examines the eccentric denizens of a luxury hotel during a week when the capital city is also hosting two major international events: the inaugural "Battle of the Lady Matadors in the Americas," and a hemispheric military conference.

Gary Graves (playwright) has been a resident playwright and company co-director at Central Works since 1998. He has helped develop 62 world premiere productions with the company, many of which he has written and/or directed. Some of the other plays he has written for the company include Chekhov's WARD 6, Palace Wreckers, Edward King, Machiavelli's The Prince, Project Ahab, Lola Montez, Enemy Combatant, The Mysterious Mr. Looney, Misanthrope, Mata Hari, and Pyrate Story. He directed the company's first collaboratively developed script, Roux, at the City Club in 1997. He also leads the Central Works Playwriting Program, and teaches playwriting regularly at the Berkeley Rep School of Theater.

Jan Zvaifler (director) is a founding member of the company and co-director of Central Works along with Gary Graves. Over the past 28 seasons she has participated as an actor, designer, director and/or producer, most recently directing Strange Ladies, RLS: Jekyll and Hyde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, Dracula Inquest, The Lion and the Fox, Education of a Rake, and RICHARD THE FIRST; a trilogy. She has also worked with many local theater companies including the Berkeley Rep, Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, Marin Theater Company, San Francisco Playwrights Foundation, and San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.

Tickets: $22 - $38 online at centralworks.org or $38 - $15 sliding scale at the door. Previews and Thursdays are always pay-what-you-can at the door!

For more information call 510.558.1381 or visit centralworks.org

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