DREAMING IN CUBAN Comes to Central Works This Month

Dreaming in Cuban, a poignant new comedy by award-winning writer Cristina García, opens with a press night on Saturday, Jun 25, and runs through July 24 (previews Jun 23 & 24). This is a new adaptation by Cristina García of her celebrated first novel developed in the Central Works Writer's Workshop. Dreaming in Cuban is written by Cristina García, directed by Gary Graves featuring Daniela Cervantes, Natalia Delgado, Anna Maria Luera, Steve Ortiz, Eric Esquivel-Gutierrez and Mary Ann Rodgers.The production has stage management by Natalia Ramos, costume design by Tammy Berlin, prop design by Debbie Shelley and sound design by Gregory Scharpen. Performances at the historic Berkeley City Club on Thur & Fri 8pm, Sat 7pm, Sun 5pm centralworks.org.

Ms. García will join Central Works playwright in residence, Patricia Milton, for a Script Club podcast, to discuss the inspiration and adaptation of her award-winning novel, Dreaming in Cuban. It will post beginning June 16 on http://centralworks.org/

Central Works 68th world premiere is Central Works' third theatrical production of a Cristina García play. This new adaptation by García of her novel is a haunting, bittersweet story of the del Pino family, a family divided in the wake of the Cuban revolution. With her characteristic humor and emotional fireworks, García weaves a complex tale of yearning and aspiration, of one child's longing for the home she left behind, and another's desire to find a new home in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

About Dreaming in Cuban the New York Times observed, "García is blessed with a poet's ear for language, a historian's fascination with the past, and a musician's intuitive understanding of the ebb and flow of emotion." Time Magazine said "Her story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the 'sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond, as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré."

According to Ms. García, "My first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, started as a poem based on the women in my extended family. It quickly got out of control! Over time it metamorphosed into a meditation on the stories that official history excludes. Now after thirty years in circulation, it felt like a good time to give the novel a more public airing. Hence, this adaptation! It's been thrilling to bring this intimate tale to four-dimensional life (four, if you include time). I love working with director Gary Graves and the sublime Central Works at the Berkeley City Club. It's truly the perfect venue for introducing the del Pino women, up close and personal, to a live audience."

Cristina García (playwright) is the author of eight novels, including: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador's Hotel, King of Cuba, Here in Berlin and the forthcoming Vanishing Maps. 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 nominated for a National Book Award and 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.

Gary Graves (director) has been a resident playwright and company co-director at Central Works since 1998. He has been a part of developing 67 world premiere productions with the company, many of which he has either written and/or directed. Some of the other productions he has directed for the company include The Lady Matador's Hotel, King of Cuba, (both by García), Bamboozled, Chekhov's WARD 6, Into the Beautiful North, and Machiavelli's The Prince. He directed the company's first collaboratively developed script, Roux, at the Berkeley City Club in 1997. He also leads the Central Works Playwriting Program, and he teaches playwriting year-round at the Berkeley Rep School of Theater.

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