What's Happening!
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YOU'RE INVITED TO THE CLUBBED THUMB GALA
On Monday, October 6th 2025 at the Etsy Headquarters in DUMBO, Clubbed Thumb will be honoring Crystal Finn, Susannah Flood and Miriam Silverman.
These three actresses are at the very heart of what we do — as individual artists and as exemplars of their craft. Where would Clubbed Thumb be without actresses like them — and without these actresses specifically?
Crystal, Susannah and Miriam have been integral to our work for the last 15 years, and we are thrilled to announce we’ll be celebrating them at our gala this fall. CLICK FOR MORE
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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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APPLY TO CLUBBED THUMB'S 25/26 NEW PLAY DIRECTING FELLOWSHIP
New play directors who have worked at least three years outside of an educational setting, and who plan to be in NYC September 2025 through January 2026, are welcome to apply for the fellowship by completing the form HERE – applications due April 1st!
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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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NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 10TH BIENNIAL COMMISSION
This year we lost one of our great comic dramatists: Christopher Durang. We’ve been reflecting on how powerful and much-needed savage humor like his is in a world like ours today. So, for the 10th Biennial Commission, please consider his work, especially from the 1980’s. Applications are due March 20th, 2025. Read more and submit yours HERE
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ANNOUNCING A RETURN ENGAGEMENT OF SUMMERWORKS 2023'S DEEP BLUE SOUND
We are thrilled to announce that Deep Blue Sound – which ran to sold-out houses at Summerworks 2023 – will return for five weeks this winter. After a wildly successful run of Grief Hotel earlier this season, we are excited to return to The Public Theater with another Summerworks hit. CLICK FOR TICKETS & INFO
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THANK YOU FOR MAKING OUR GALA SUCH A SUCCESS!
Monday night’s Gala, celebrating our dear friends and collaborators dots, was beautiful, moving and very fun. Thank you to everyone who attended, performed, volunteered, donated and otherwise supported this very special night.
See photos from the event on our Instagram (and tag @clubbedthumb if you’re posting your own)!
At the event, we raised funds in honor of dots to help us better support the designers in our community – and we happily exceeded our goal. But there’s no such thing as a late donation! If you’d like to contribute to the fund, click 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 Note From Crystal Finn, playwright of Find Me Here
I wrote Find Me Here in the early months of the pandemic, in a house in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near where I grew up. The house had been my Grandparent’s for decades and was the place they both had died. It is not an especially remarkable house. But the view from the house is remarkable. To the front is a forest of pine and cedar and high mountain scrub. The rear extends a few yards from the house before reaching a cliff which drops sharply down to the California Feather River. Penman Peak, the highest of a ridge of sloping mountains in the Mohawk Valley, cradles the river and is a constantly shifting canvas of grey and purple.
I had never seen the house change from winter to spring. It took a long time. The snow was deep that year. Gold Lake Highway, which is the only road up to Lake’s Basin, where my grandparents had run a boys camp for twenty-five years, and where my mother and her sisters had spent their childhoods, was not even passable till May.
The first day the road opened up we drove to the lakes and tried to hike up to the lowest spot we could below the Buttes. One mile up, through the snow, it started hailing and my daughter cried that it was a sign from the sky to turn back. Before we did, we caught a glimpse of the first lake, buried half in snow, the water black and dark along the shore.
When the snow finally melted, the grass in the front yard emerged already bright green. A family of deer started coming every day at noon to lie in the shade, and my daughter and I would eat our lunch by the window, watching them. Then she would leave for the bedroom to listen to her Harry Potter audio book, and I would stay put, sometimes for hours.
There was nothing to do. My life was on pause. Theater was dead. I watched the river. I marked the snow-pack each day. I looked at the mountain which always was its least beautiful in mid-day, and tried to find the source of each impression of color it gave to me: trees were green, boulders were grey, an unidentifiable blending of sky and rock was purple. Thin clouds would move in in the late afternoon and curl around the peaks, diving them into segments. The tops became bright with the sun, the bottoms dull brown under the shadow of the clouds.
My Grandmother had told me that when her sister, my great Aunt, had died, they scattered her ashes at the top of that peak and had put a light there to mark the spot, so that when my Grandmother did the dishes she could look out the window and see the light.
At night, in the house, I washed the dishes at the same sink and looked out at the same peak. I didn’t see any light. But I thought of my grandmother and her two sisters. And I thought of my mom and her two sisters.
The mountains in Find Me Here aren’t named. Neither are the lakes. They could be a lot of mountains, a lot of lakes. In the end, the play I wrote wasn’t really about those places. It was about the people who lived there. It was about what they saw. The mountains, the river, the lakes belong to them.