Most Central Works plays are available for licensing! Please contact us if you're interested in producing one of our shows at your theater.

The Human Ounce

written by Nicole Parizeau
directed by Gary Graves
Produced in: 2020 2020-2021 2021

World Premiere #66: from the Central Works Writers Workshop

a new play about art and scandal

A fine old painting on the gallery wall.

Pride of place in the museum. The painter? An old master in his own right…admired worldwide, historically important, and an inspiration to thousands. And revealed as a monster. What now?

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Bamboozled

written by Patricia Milton
directed by Gary Graves
Produced in: 2018

World Premiere #58: from the Central Works Writers Workshop

a new comedy about family valuables

Abby is a young Black woman framed for defrauding a Daughter of the Confederacy out of a fortune in Civil War heirlooms. She’s on the hook for a million bucks and her legal team is flailing. Should she cop a plea? Or take a long shot for justice?

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Wonderland

a Kafka-esque comedy
written by Gary Graves
directed by Jan Zvaifler
Produced in: 2019

World Premiere #62: a Central Works Method Play

Down the rabbit hole …

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?

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King of Cuba

written by Cristina García (based on her novel)
directed by Gary Graves
Produced in: 2018

World Premiere #60: from the Central Works Writers Workshop

“El Comandante” is an ailing dictator in Cuba struggling to maintain his tenuous grip on power. Goyo is a bitter exile in Miami determined to put the dictator in his grave. Both are in their 80s. What will get El Comandante first—old age or Goyo?

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s
The Yellow Wallpaper

Written by Gary Graves
Directed by Jan Zvaifler
Produced in: 2015

A classic of early American feminist literature, first published in 1892, Gilman’s haunting short story follows a Victorian woman’s descent into madness. Confined in the attic of an old, dilapidated mansion, as part of a “rest cure” prescribed by her husband, “Jane” begins to see strange forms creeping around behind the torn and ragged yellow wallpaper in the room.

“One of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story, worse yet, it may not.” – Alan Ryan, Haunting Women

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Robert Louis Stevenson:
Jekyll and Hyde

Written by Gary Graves
Directed by Jan Zvaifler
Produced in: 2016

A new play based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of good and evil: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

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Ada and the Memory Engine

Written by Lauren Gunderson
Directed by Gary Graves
Produced in: 2015

A new play about the world’s first computer programmer

As the Industrial Revolution dawns, young Ada (daughter of the flamboyant and notorious Lord Byron) sees the boundless creative potential in the “analytic engines” of her friend and soul-mate, Charles Babbage, inventor of the first mechanical computer. Ada envisions a whole new world where art and information converge – a world she will not live to see. Jane Austen meets Steve Jobs in this poignant pre-tech romance heralding the computer age.