What's Happening!
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SUMMERWORKS 2026 IS ALMOST HERE!
Our annual line-up of three brand-new plays is approaching, featuring: TITANS by Jesse Jae Hoon, directed by Tara Elliott; DERANGEMENTS by Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, directed by Annie Tippe; and THE FAMILY DOG by Bailey Williams, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad.
Running May 14 – Jun 30 at the Wild Project. TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
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SUMMERWORKS 2025'S SOLD-OUT CRITIC'S PICK COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE RETURNS
Tickets for Ro Reddick’s COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE are on sale now! The Summerworks 2025 Critic’s Pick, directed by Knud Adams, will return for an extended run co-produced by MCC Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS & INFO
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MEET OUR NEW GROUP COHORTS!
A very warm welcome to the incoming writers and directors taking part in Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group and New Play Fellowship!
Directors Terrence I Mosley, Liz Peterson and Hanna Yurfest will work on newly commissioned plays by Max Mooney, jose sebastian alberdi and Emma Horwitz respectively – stay tuned for a Winterworks announcement.
And we’re looking forward to getting to know Alyssa Haddad-Chin, Doug Robinson, Dylan Guerra, Jan Rosenberg, Jen Diamond, Nadja Leonard-Hooper, Sarah Grace Goldman and Yulia Tsukerman in this year’s writers’ group!
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THANK YOU FOR MAKING OUR GALA A GREAT SUCCESS
Thanks to everyone who joined us to honor Crystal, Susannah, and Miriam, and to everyone who contributed to make it a truly special night.
We were moved by the warmth and generosity in the room on Monday October 6th — lots of hugs, laughter and a even few happy tears. These three are the real deal and we are lucky to know them; we’re excited to keep celebrating them and working with them for many years to come.
Actors are at the heart of what we do, and it’s not too late to support them with a gift to our 2025 gala! DONATE HERE
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THANK YOU FOR COMING TO SUMMERWORKS 2025
Whether it was your first Summerworks or your 28th, we are so pleased you could join us. CLICK HERE for some photos and essays from this season.
We’ll be spending the summer incubating and planning for the fall, but we have lot of news to share, so watch this space!
In the meantime, we’re pleased to announce that our outgoing board chair will match donations up to a total of $25,000 to support future remounts of Summerworks shows (like this season’s Deep Blue Sound). He wants us to keep it up – and so do we! CLICK HERE TO JOIN THAT EFFORT
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ANNOUNCING SUMMERWORKS 2025
Due to overwhelming demand, we’re adding performances this year – but Summerworks shows always sell out, so lock in your seats with a pass!
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THANK YOU FOR A GREAT RUN!
Spending the last two months with Deep Blue Sound has been a joy and a balm. We are deeply proud of the work, and humbled by the talent and dedication of this company of artists.
The show played for six sold-out weeks and we added as many shows as we could – but sadly, we closed this weekend. Thank you to the over 4,000 people who came to visit our island. And thank you to all the artists, staff, funders and friends who made it possible. This was a special one.
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NOW PLAYING: DEEP BLUE SOUND
Our “devastatingly beautiful” production from Summerworks 2023 returns for a limited engagement, in residence at the Public Theater. Now playing! CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
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WINTERWORKS 2025 HAS COME TO A CLOSE
Thank you to the hundreds of people who joined as at Playwrights Downtown for the 10th annual Winterworks. We were so proud of the work these amazing artists made — and we managed to cram everyone in to share it. Congratulations especially to Directing Fellows Iris McCloughan, NJ Agwuna and Laura Dupper – read more HERE
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OUR NEW ANTHOLOGY - ON SALE NOW
We’ve been eager to put out a second anthology since Funny, Strange, Provocative was published in 2007, and the last year finally provided us with the time to take on this long-awaited project. We are thrilled to announce that Unusual Stories, Unusually Told, published by Bloomsbury/Methuen, is now available!
In it you’ll find seven Clubbed Thumb plays that span 18 years of our history, as well as essays and interviews about the work, and the often atypical processes that led to their productions.
Read more about the book and get your discounted copy (and our first anthology) HERE
A response to Derangements
by Bailey Williams
I first encountered Nadja Leonhard-Hooper’s Derangements in an anonymous pile of plays. I was reading for the final round of the 2025 Biennial Commission, which asked for work inspired by Christopher Durang, and therefore we were looking for something deranged, I mean, Durangian.
It’s a terrible assignment, actually. Very unfair to ask for ten pages that make us laugh, but have a pulsing undercurrent of darkness that reveal something horrible and true about society-at-large. Ten pages that are so profoundly stupid, they horseshoe back around to brilliance. Savage, but with a painful, beating heart.
Those first ten pages of Derangements are, to me, perfect and perfectly Durangian. Anne Marie and Roxanne sit in a restaurant in 1983 and unbeknownst to them (and the audience) have two entirely separate conversations. This misunderstanding peaks in a moment of comic transcendence as a gay waiter is reluctantly roped in. Anne Marie, shattered by the revelation that Roxanne cannot tell the difference between a normal human interaction and sexual come-on, makes sure her friend is behaving appropriately in her workplace, a pre-school:
ANNE MARIE: Yes. I mean the…the children don’t come onto you, do they?
ROXANNE: Anne Marie, I don’t mean this in a nasty way. But I think you might be a pervert.
When I first read these ten pages, I had no clue who the genius pervert was that wrote them, or what could possibly happen next. How could something so hilarious continue for eighty additional theater minutes?
I was being stupid, because what happens next is actually so obvious: a man flashes Anne Marie and Roxanne, which impregnates Roxanne and demolishes Anne Marie’s frontal lobe, so she can only remember twelve words that start with L (she does much better with D). Then, of course, as in most contemporary plays, a howling Flasher is chewed out by a new mother who is disappointed in the Village and her husband, who wants to have sex with her body in her house. Anne Marie is diagnosed as “evil” by her neurologist, Roxanne ruins her chances with Dr. Gynecologist by making her sexually jealous, a Duolingo owl appears to help Aunt Colleen learn the phrase “housing is not a human right” in Español, and hey, while I have you, have you ever tried WombWork? Can I interest you in a retreat, which is the best $5000 you’ll ever spend?
I could go on—and the temptation is overwhelming because there are simply so many incredible, surprising bits and jokes and gags and swerves in this play. But Derangements is much more than its non-stop pitter patter of hilarity; it’s an incisive depiction of what it feels like to be alive right now, particularly as a woman subject to the demented cause-and-effect in a patriarchal society.
Consider these two scenarios:
A woman is assaulted because she was walking alone at night in a short dress.
Roxanne is pregnant with a fart for nine months because she was flashed by a man in a trench coat.
The word because is working hard here, attempting to make logic where there clearly is none. So much of living now feels this way. What is happening to me and why? Everyone’s got a reason— your insurance company, the news, a friend who won’t stop posting on Threads— but the narrative never totally checks out. It’s just… ridiculous.
Anyway, I just really really hope you are eating organ meats. And please, don’t go visiting the Unaffiliated Woman for husband poison. She’s super, super armed.