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 Scenic View by Ken Rus Schmoll
I reread Crystal Finn’s Find Me Here recently and kept thinking of Wittgenstein’s statement, “The world is all that is the case.” What is all that is the case? What is the world? What is really there? The play poses that question analytically, emotionally, and also literally. And also satisfyingly.
When I first read the play, I said to her in an email that it was “meaty and full and somehow, too, light and translucent, a web of relationships that have clear history and longevity but also spontaneity teetering on the unknown of whatever might happen next in life.” It reminded me of the films Summer Hours and The Man of My Life. It made me ache with longing and burst out laughing. I also remember it felt like inhaling fresh air.
The word “flawed,” when attributed to a person, is redundant. Find Me Here describes the discord between members of four generations of a family, and yet remarkably each character is deeply good. The dramatic heft of the play lies, I think, in its belief that we can all agree and disagree simultaneously. Or maybe that agreeing can only exist on a bed of disagreeing. The cost of agreement is letting go.
Each character’s world view could be described as unique and even remote from the others. But each one is also in process. The failed and successful attempts to cast out and connect are the fabric of the play. We get to experience the close pleasures of personality and eccentricity, and simultaneously the scenic view of circumstance, of humor, of how people organize themselves or are organized in (and into) a family.
I’m describing life. And Chekhov, which the play acknowledges and enjoys.
But the other thing I wrote to Crystal was that I felt “an instantaneous recognition and inspiration of what the play wants to be on a stage.” Unlike life, the theater has extra dimensions, ones that only exist on a stage, “the theatrical,” which is a term that has actually only ever meant the exigencies of acting, the burden of actors to manifest the impossible. The complex terrain of Find Me Here, while woven, wrought, decorated, and littered with the stuff of life, is fueled by the impossible. It opens up in my mind like a pop-up book, reaching toward regions beyond the horizon and periphery, unknowable until now, here, at the Wild Project.
Ken Rus Schmoll, Crystal Finn on Zoom, December 2020, MacBook Air screenshot, private collection.