The Central Works Script Club Offers BAMBOOZLED by Patricia Milton

The Central Works Script Club, is a monthly book club - for plays! For episode #3, the Script Club offering is Bamboozled by the award-winning playwright Patricia Milton. Bamboozled, which will be available to read on the Central Works website (centralworks.org) starting August 4, was developed by Ms. Milton in the Central Works Writers Workshop, and is inspired by true events. In Bamboozled, Abby is a young appraiser touring with the show "Antiques Roadtrip." She's a black woman from L.A. traveling in the south-Shelby County, Tennessee. When she's accused of defrauding a Daughter of the Confederacy out of a fortune in Civil War heirlooms, Abby finds herself on the hook for a million dollars. Her legal team is flailing and her accuser is formidable. Should she cop a plea? Or take a long shot for justice?

The Central Works Script Club offers a script each month and makes it available to read. It might be a play from the Central Works catalog or a brand new selection. Participants are invited to read the selection and to send in questions for the playwright. A recorded conversation with the writer about the play and the production is then posted on the Central Works website (centralworks.org) on the final Tuesday of the month (8/25 for August), for Central Works Script Clubbers to enjoy at their convenience.

Join CW in August for a thrilling script read of Bamboozled and the opportunity to send in questions for Patricia Milton; then listen to a moderated conversation with Patricia and actor and comedian Chelsea Bearce when the online interview is posted on August 25.

The Central Works Script Club is offered free with a request for donations.

Visit centralworks.org/central-works-script-club or follow on Facebook or Twitter (#CWScriptClub).

Coming Up at Central Works: Audio Play & Podcast

Central Works is developing an audio version of the new play Bystanders, also by Patricia Milton, with actors Kimberly Ridgeway and Maria Marquis. The audio play will be directed by Gary Graves and is scheduled to become available 8/15.

Central Works is now also sponsoring the weekly podcast The Yay with Norman Gee & Reg Clay. The Yay, produced for the past three years by two Central Works alumni, is a podcast about "Life in the Theatre and the Theatre of Life." Each week, Reg and Norman bring in a local theater artist to join them in a discussion of their careers, their life, the state of theater in general and around the Bay Area.

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

Patricia Milton is a Resident Playwright for Central Works and a long-term member of the Central Works Writers Workshop. Plays written for Central Works include: Bamboozled (2018), Hearts of Palm (2016), Enemies: Foreign and Domestic (2015), and Reduction in Force (2011). She is a recipient of the 2015 Outstanding World Premiere Play by Theatre Bay Area for Enemies: Foreign and Domestic, and Reduction in Force was voted 2011 "Best Local Play" in Broadway World's annual poll. Her comedy Believers has enjoyed productions in Monterey and San Francisco, and has played for the past two years in Istanbul, Turkey. Her drama about the death penalty, Without Mercy, was presented at the Newfoundland Women's Work Festival and was produced by Off Broadway West Theatre Company in San Francisco in 2017. Ms. Milton has had more than one hundred productions and readings of her plays internationally, including at the 3Girls Theatre, San Francisco Exploratorium, PlayGround SF, Woman's Will, Women's Theatre Project, Bay Area One Acts, and City Lights Theatre.

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."

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