New Musical PROJECT AHAB to Play Central Works, 7/18-8/23

Central Works 25th anniversary season continues with PROJECT AHAB; or, Eye of the Whale, a new musical about how a band of hippies, mystics and visionaries changed the world. Set in 1973, in the formative years of the ecology movement, Project Ahab converts Moby Dick, Melville's classic story of a man bent on killing a whale, to that of a man determined to stop the killing of whales; or, "Ahab goes after the whalers." Central Works' 48th world premiere opens with a press night July 18 (previews July 16 & 17), and runs through August 23 at the historic Berkeley City Club.

Building on the success of the company's 2013 musical epic, Red Virgin, writer Gary Graves and director John Patrick Moore team up with musical director Ben Euphrat. "Ahab" draws on popular music from the early 70s, including tunes by local Berkeley icon Country Joe McDonald, the Youngblood's Jesse Colin Young, and B.W. Stevenson. The cast of actor/singer/musicians also taps into a rich array of traditional seafaring and folk songs.

Project Ahab features performers Michael Barrett Austin*, Ben Euphrat*, Sam Jackson, Caitlyn Louchard and Clive Worsley (*members AEA), with stage management by Vanessa Ramos, costumes by Tammy Berlin, sound by Gregory Scharpen, and props by Debbie Shelley.

The script was created using the Central Works Method of collaborative play development. In a supportive workshop environment, group exploration and collective brainstorming contribute to the development of the script. The play emerges as a rich mix of group research, dramaturgical analysis and shared imagination.
Central Works fills 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 come to the company fully developed, some are products of the Central Works Method (described above), and some are developed in the Central Works Writers Workshop, an ongoing commissioning program established in 2012.