What's Happening!
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SUMMERWORKS 2025'S SOLD-OUT CRITIC'S PICK COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE RETURNS FOR SIX WEEKS - TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
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. Friends of Clubbed Thumb have access to $45 tickets throughout the run – 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 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.