CLUBBED THUMB’S 19/20 & 20/21 EARLY-CAREER WRITERS’ GROUPS

In October 2021, we finally were able to gather to hear readings of the plays-in-progress from the last two cohorts in our early-career group. For those who couldn’t join us (and for those who could) we wanted to share some information and some writing from each of them. We hope you’ll take a moment to get to know these wonderful playwrights!

THE 2019 / 2020 GROUP

Crystal Finn is an actor and writer living in New York. She has originated roles in over twenty new plays at off-Broadway and downtown theaters, including Playwright’s Horizons, Roundabout, MTC, The Play Company, Fulcrum, 59E59 and Clubbed Thumb where she is an Affiliated Artist. Her solo show Becoming Liv Ullmann was a critical hit at the NYC Fringe Festival, and then went on to New Ground Theater Festival in Cleveland where it was chosen as one of the top ten plays of the year by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Crystal’s play The Faire, based on her life growing up at a Renaissance Faire, was produced off-Broadway with Fault Line Theater Company. The New York times called the play a “delicious…sharp comedy.” Along with full length plays, she is currently writing a series of solo performance pieces, which blend stand-up comedy and personal essay in the tradition of Spalding Gray. She and the director Ken Rus Schmoll have begun a long-term project adapting the experimental novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress, by David Markson, for performance. When theater starts up again she is set to make her Broadway debut in Birthday Candles at the Roundabout.

Three Ways of Looking At
A patriarch dies at 100 years old and three sisters open his will. One sister is worried she is next. One sister is determined never to be next. One sister is becoming invisible. All of them are trying to see the shape of something just barely there.

May Treuhaft-Ali is a playwright, director, and dramaturg. After graduating from Wesleyan University, she completed an M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies at Trinity College Dublin on a George J. Mitchell Scholarship. Her plays have been produced at the Dublin Scene+Heard Festival, the Wild Project, the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwrights Conference, the Blank Theatre Company, and the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. She is an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group. Recent directing projects include God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz and a site-specific adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. May recently completed a Literary Apprenticeship at Steppenwolf, and is currently the Literary Fellow at Playwrights Horizons.

ESCAPEGOAT
Humans brought goats to the Galápagos. The goats ate everything in sight. The island dried up and the tortoises died out. In order to save the last living tortoise, the humans must exterminate the goats before it is too late. ESCAPEGOAT is an eco-parable about who has a right to live where, human intervention in non-human ecosystems, and the species whose fates are inextricably tied to our own.

Justic Hehir‘s work explores sexuality, feminism, and the formation and rupture of human bonds. She is a member of Colt Coeur and the 2020 Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers’ Group. Her play Night Creatures will premiere at Chicago’s Jackalope Theater this fall. Other recent projects include true believer, which will be published this year by Table Work Press, and freeplay, a play about a women-owned dildo company under development through an EST/Sloan Project commission. She is currently commissioned by the George Street Playhouse developing a play for high school students about consent and sexual assault. She graduated from Hunter College in 2018 with an MFA in Playwriting (under the tutelage of Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins) and from Rutgers University in 2016 with a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies and English. She lives in Newark, NJ with her partner and lots and lots of animals.

Freeplay
Freeplay is a growing feminist sex toy company, popular for their decidedly modern take on the dildo. Run by best friends since college, engineer Amy and sculptor Sara, the Brooklyn-based business is intimate and casual, their office shared by aspiring artist Travis, and their devoted intern, Emma. As Amy starts IVF and Sara begins fantasizing about Travis, the mid-thirties equilibrium the pair thought they had reached begins to crumble. What ensues is a story about the painful intimacy of female friendships, dildos, and the people who make themc

Night Creatures
On a snowy day after Christmas, three NJ animal shelter employees hold down the fort. With the inclement weather comes a lull in the everyday bustle of the shelter, and the group’s interactions soon expand to fill the space. This play is about animals, the humans who disappoint them, and the unexpected individuals who try to make things right.

Julia Izumi is a writer and performer. Her work has been developed with and presented at MTC, Bushwick Starr, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Barn Arts Collective’s Hamilton Project Residency, NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights’ Workshop, BMI’s Librettists Workshop, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Trinity Repertory Company, CAATA’s National Asian-American Theatre ConFest, and Corkscrew Theatre Festival. Honors for her work include O’Neill Theater Center’s NPC Finalist, Kilroys List Honorable Mention, and KCACTF’s Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award. She is a 2020 New Georges Audrey Resident and is currently under commission through MTC/Sloan. www.juliaizumi.com

(An Audio Guide for) Unsung Snails and Heroes
An epic yet personal play about a young girl journeying from Japan to Manchuria to retrieve her deceased father’s bones in 1945, just before the end of World War II. Inspired by a true story from the playwright’s family history, this play follows an ancestor snail and a self-guided audio tour to excavate the definition of heroism across generations and cultures.

Ry Szelong is a writer/performer/director from the Bay Area, California & currently based in NYC. He was a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group, and was previously a Fellow with University Settlement’s Performance Project, LAMBDA Literary’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and was also a Finalist for the 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm Greenhouse Residency, and a 2017 Resident Artist with Governor’s Island Public Works Department. As a performer, he’s worked with companies like Dixon Place, JACK, Abrons Arts Center, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova ANT Fest, Pan Pan Theatre at Skirball Center, LaMaMa, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Loading Dock Theatre, The Gym at Judson, National Queer Theater at The Eagle, INTAR, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Triskelion Arts, The Tank, and The Parsnip Ship at The Actors Fund Arts Center. NYU: Tisch PHTS.

Interabang
A fragmented portrait of a fragmented identity, Interabang hopscotches through time unearthing queerness(‽) and shame(!) and pride(?) in 3+ generations of a Japanese-Chinese-white family, their pet shih-tzu and the backyard water demon.

Kori Alston, Born and raised in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, Alston began his career as a poet and performer at a young age. As a young slam poet, he had a prolific career and remained undefeated through his shift towards playwriting. In college, Alston found a great deal of success as a playwright, actor, and director. He is currently a 7th grade English teacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

A Case for Black Girls
A twelve-year-old black girl from Brooklyn runs away from home as God instructed her to do. She leaves with nothing but her Rottweiler and some fire in her belly and makes a few unexpected friends along the way. She learns that some things are meant to be destroyed.

Deneen Reynolds-Knott is a member of Clubbed Thumb’s 2019-2020 Early-Career Writers’ Group and received a finalist grant from their 2018 Open-Application Commission. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and has developed work with Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency, Project Y’s Playwrights Group and Frank Silvera Workshop’s 3in3 Playwright Residency. Her plays include, Babes in Holland (will be presented at 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Baton (2018 Premiere Stages Play Festival Workshop Reading; 2017 Playfest at the Orlando Shakespeare Company) and Antepartum (2020 Fire This Time Festival ten-minute play program). She received her MFA in film from Columbia University.

Shoebox Picnic Road Side
In 1955, a black family travels by caravan on Route One from Harlem to visit their matriarch in Littleton, North Carolina. Knowing they were unlikely to be served by eateries along the way, the family prepared a feast placed in shoeboxes lined with tin foil. They’ve pulled over to picnic on the road’s shoulder. This is your invitation to join them.

Assuming Positive Intentions
The Sun Porch Collective was a thriving wellness community centering the voices and bodies of Black women. Then they got cancelled. What’s better for morale than a mandatory professional development retreat?

Aaron Ricciardi is a New York City-based writer and performer, originally from Coral Springs, Florida. Aaron’s work has been produced and developed by Clubbed Thumb, the Playwrights Center, the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Advanced Workshop, where he is a lyricist. Work includes The Star Killers; Hanukkah Harriet, a play for young people (soon to be published by Stage Partners); Only Child; A Bushel and a Peck; Nice Nails; The Travels: an Epic play with songs (NYMF production); Resting Bitch Face; Can I See Your Face?; and Him & Her & Gay Men In General. Aaron graduated from the Theatre program at Northwestern University, where he studied playwriting under Laura Schellhardt, and he received his MFA in Playwriting from Indiana University, where he studied under Peter Gil-Sheridan. He is currently a Core Apprentice at the Playwrights’ Center, a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group, and a lyricist in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Aaron is on faculty at SUNY New Paltz in their Creative Writing Program.www.aaronricciardi.com

Nice Nails
In a nail salon on the outskirts of New York City, immigrant ladies spend their days toiling like servants over the fingers and toes of obnoxious customers. This modest shop is the livelihood of a Korean-American family, who dream of making it big in America—or, really, just scraping by, especially now that the new salon down the street is siphoning off their customers. As word spreads of labor department crackdowns, the salon owners’ daughter fights to modernize this tired establishment, while growing captivated by a new customer who is not like the others.

Only Child
In a landscape of distorted and fractured memories, a teenage prince meets Jess, a lonely schoolteacher, and becomes ensnared in her marriage, her family, and her fantasies. Boundaries fall away, and childhood is stolen—from The Prince, from Jess’s daughter, and from the students who came before.

The Star Killers
Jacqui is a wildly untalented thirty-something actress who’s been struggling in L.A. for years and has nothing to show for it. When she meets a has-been movie star and his even more has-been wife—who believe there is an underground organization working to steal money from and then murder Hollywood stars—she latches onto them. As their lives and ambitions intertwine, it’s a dangerous cocktail of desperation, paranoia, delusion, and filmmaking for this threesome, who try so hard and want so much and just can’t cut it.

THE 2020 / 2021 GROUP

Cristina Luzárraga is a playwright and educator from New Jersey whose dark comedies tend to feature unruly women and an exploration of the grotesque and uncanny. She is a 2021-2022 McKnight Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis where she currently resides; previously, she was a Jerome Fellow. Her plays include Critical Distance, Millennialville, Havana Syndrome, and La Mujer Barbuda (2019 Screencraft Stage Play Winner, produced at Blank Theatre in LA). An alum of The Second City Conservatory in Chicago and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood collective, she is a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group. Her full-lengths have been developed with Playmakers Repertory Company, Teatro LATEA, and IATI Theater; her short plays have been featured in the 2020 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival and published in anthologies by Smith and Kraus. She is working on a commissioned musical about Betty Crocker for History Theatre in St. Paul. BA: Princeton; MFA: Ohio University: MA in Educational Theatre: NYU.

La Mujer Barbuda
Maggie is an American airline pilot and new mother. When she tries to pump breast milk in the cockpit, she almost perishes in a plane crash––and that’s not even the worst of it. Magdalena is a 17th century Italian weaver and new mother. When she suddenly grows a beard and nurses a baby at age fifty-two, she sets off a domestic and civil crisis––and that, too, is not even the worst of it. La Mujer Barbuda is a dark comedy that explores the intersecting lives of two women, separated by time and space, and united in the struggle to thrive as a mother in a man’s world.

Critical Distance 
Critical Distance is a satire that pits two women against each other: Inez, a white/Latina art history graduate student at Columbia University, and Felicia, a black security guard at the Guggenheim Museum. Inez is attempting to navigate the highfalutin waters of academia and write her dissertation on outsider art, but her scholarship is turned on its head when she encounters Felicia, a no-nonsense autodidact who calls it like she sees it. When Inez grants Felicia a platform to voice her unorthodox opinions, she unwittingly creates a competitor in the world of art criticism, and the two women fight it out for the sake of relative fame and fortune. The play examines the intersection of art and class, and the extent to which art is subjectively defined.

Allyson Dwyer is an NJ/NYC playwright who is interested in cycles, technology, navigating the world as a woman, and how being a woman and technology intersect. Sometimes she writes about these things together, sometimes separate. Recent plays include The Hub (Semi-Finalist, Princess Grace), Nothing Remained But Voice And Bones (Semi-Finalist New American Voices and NAP at Normal Ave), and Arrow of Time (The Brick 2022). Her short play An Instant Message is a Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival finalist. She’s currently working on an audio play as part of the inaugural SoundLab at The Brick, a member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group and a recent “pal” at Fresh Ground Pepper.

The Hub
In the midst of puberty, 12-year-old Marissa discovers The Hub, a chat room where a group of young losers and outcasts can do or be anything, and together escape the confines of reality. Under the alias Ami-chan, Marissa begins her first relationship with a sixteen year old gamer, but soon finds that even online, it’s hard to hide who she really is. As Marissa learns to grow up in this new digital frontier, she will begin to understand just how much control she has over her own existence.

Nothing Remained But Voice And Bones
In second grade, Narcissus visits overweight Mel and informs her that she is cursed to search for perfection but to never find it. Unable to grapple with this truth, she spends a lifetime letting this curse define every relationship, even those between her past selves. Only Mel can find a way to break out of a cycle of self-hatred that keeps her from realizing what is truly beautiful about her body and her existence.

Nelson Diaz-Marcano is a Puerto Rican NYC-based playwright, activist, and administrator who works as the Literary Manager of the Latinx Playwright Circle and as Community Outreach Coordinator for the Atlantic Theater Company. Recently, he was named as one of the recipients of the Ensemble Studio Theatre Sloan Commission award for the 2020/2021 season.  Nelson’s plays have been developed by Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, Vision Latino Theater Company,  Milagro, The William Inge Theatre Festival, Classical Theatre of Harlem, and The Parsnip Ship among others. Recently, Nelson’s podcast series “Flor” was released as part of Braata Productions’ Caribbean in Queens series on every platform where people stream their podcasts. Other recent production credits include “The Diplomats” (Random Acts Chicago,) “Paper Towels” (INTAR,) “Misfit, America” (Hunter Theatre Company,) “I Saw Jesus in Toa Baja” (Conch Shell Productions) and “World Classic” (The Parnsip Ship). Nelson’s belief is that the best theater comes out of an uplifting community by amplifying and developing voices that are exploring America through different cultural lenses.

Misfit, America
Combining the magical realistic influences of Latin American literature with the Western genre popularized in the twentieth century, “Misfit, America” follows a diverse community led by an interracial couple as they are forced to protect a Native American teen from a brotherhood of supremacists. But before they can fight, they must become at peace with their past and learn to trust the future on each other. Living on the outskirts of the last free place in America, this band of misfits must prepare to give it all or run

World Classic
“World Classic” is what happens when you take the quintessential American domestic drama away from white suburbia. It explores the identity issues created by assimilation through the eyes of two generations of an immigrant family. Like “The Humans” or “August Osage County” before it, it all takes place during one night, but unlike them, this play focuses on those that had to sacrifice their homeland and in the process, compromise their heritage.

Hanna Novak is a New York-based playwright. Her plays have been presented at the New Ohio and The Performing Garage in New York City. She is a member of the 2020-21 Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers’ Group, and her work has been developed at the Ucross Foundation and as part of The Wooster Group’s visiting artist program. Hanna graduated from the MFA playwriting program at Hunter College, where she studied with Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and received the Irv Zarkower Award.

Left Out
A jealous, demented father has left one of his adopted daughters out of his will. As they sort out the inheritance for themselves, two sisters wrestle with their relationships to one another and to their parents – both biological and adoptive. Heiress is an intimate, updated take on the inheritance/will drama that foregrounds the desires and struggles of two young women trying to locate themselves within a family.

I Wanna Destroy You
A seemingly random act of violence connects the lives of two aging liberals and a group of teenage friends in New York City. Drawing on events of the Trump era, pop culture, and the tender and at-times absurd dynamics of teen friendships, the play considers what it is to grapple with — and grow through — loss in a fraught political present.

Ruth Tang writes performance texts & poetry & makes weird internet experiments out of Brooklyn, NY. They are a member of the New Georges Jam, the Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers’ Group, and a NYTW 2050 Fellow. Their past work includes FUTURE WIFE: Party in A Google Sheet (Corkscrew Festival 4.0), Bad Chinese (Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Festival, dir. Peter Kuo, 2018), and Building A Character (Wild Rice Singapore, dir. Mei Ann Teo, 2018). MFA: The New School for Drama. 

FUTURE WIFE
A romantic tragedy about goats and the economy. On a production line, which is also the entire world, a woman and a goat meet and fall in love, despite the blood. Despite the knives. In the distant past, and the far future, choruses of pirates and goats convene to discuss important questions about their societies: Is this the best economy we could invent? Who invented it? Who must die to keep the economy running, and how can we make those deaths as invisible and exciting as possible?

Johnny Lloyd is a New York-based writer and producer. Recent productions include OR, AN ASTRONAUT PLAY (Co-Production, InVersion Theatre & The Tank) and ROUND (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. Other recent plays include THE PROBLEM WITH MAGIC, IS: (Bay Area Playwrights Festival) and love is hard and absolutely (probably) worth it. His work has been seen and developed at Second Stage Theatre, 59E59, Dixon Place, Judson Memorial Church, JAGFest (White River Junction, VT), TheatreLab (Boca Raton, FL), and more. As a writer, Johnny has collaborated with companies such as Theater in Quarantine and SalonSeance. Member of the 2020-2021 Clubbed Thumb Early-Career Writers Group; previously a member of the 2019-2020 Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency. Johnny was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Open-Application Commission at Clubbed Thumb and a finalist for the 2020 Columbia@Roundabout Reading Series. He is the Director of Artistic Development at The Tank and Producing Director for InVersion Theatre.

love is hard and absolutely probably worth it
Tom’s a former dancer. Vaughn’s a (current) painter. Vaughn and Tom are dating. They’ve been dating for a while. Vaughn and Tom have worries. They’re worried about their brothers, their fathers, their mothers, their very adorable pillow pet. And their apartment. Vaughn and Tom live in a very small apartment. Unfortunately, their world is about to get a little bit smaller. But maybe they’ll be able to break out of these four walls and learn new ways to express themselves and express love. Maybe. Set in the doldrums of 2020, love is hard and absolutely (probably) worth it is a meditation on brotherhood, fatherhood, sonhood, generational legacies, race, politics, and what it means to build something with a person you love in spite of all of the above.

birthday birthday birthday
Clark and Marissa are best friends. They share a birthday. They also share a birthday party. And when you share a birthday party, that means you’re connected for a very long time. It might even feel like an eternity. A couple of friends are along for the ride – but with politics, race, and all beating down their door, it’ll be a miracle if anyone escapes the birthday cycle unscathed. Spanning decades, BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY is a glimpse into how we fortify ourselves against the changes the world brings – and the trauma those changes can instill.

Kathy Ng !!! hello !!! I’m kathy. I am a playwright//librettist/??????! I am interested in finding new ways to magnify small feelings, study non-humanness and communicate  accumulation. I come from Hong Kong. It is a source of sadness. In small american apartments, I crochet, rehydrate seaweed, cook meals, fret over raccoons, and sleep. BA: Brown University. MFA: NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing. Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writer’s Group 20/21.

Happy Life
Oh, the Great Octopus wants to meet you downtown tonight. He would like to know…Are you ready to start living a happy life? Like a Shiba that runs a small convenience store?  A play in two parts about the closed domestic door, stacked bodies, and stacked ghosts. About vomit, acronyms, coffee creamer tentacles, and recycling dead city birds into dead city curtains.

Bacon Sausage Veggie Noodles
Bacon Sausage Veggie Noodles…is it a dish? Is it a code? Nevermind that, is there room at the Sweet Potato Hotel? Are you sure? How can you be sure?! Don’t use magic. 

Nazareth Hassan is a southern writer, director, and musician based in Brooklyn. He creates performance texts, videos, sound installations, music, and plays. He is preoccupied with the experience of in betweenness, disembodiment, dissonance, and juxtaposition, and seeks to contextualize these sensations spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially, temporally, and generationally.