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
An Interview with Crystal Finn, playwright of Find Me Here
Do you think your myriad experiences of Summerworks as an actor (8, including the character Crystal Blynn) prepared you especially to be produced in Summerworks? Is it strange to be on the other side of it?
Yes and Yes! Definitely. I know the space, I know the time-frame, I know so many of the designers. I have the rhythm of the festival in me! And it HAS been strange to be on the other side. Strange and wonderful! Same room, different view!
You are an only child. Do you have any insight into why plays about three sisters are so iconic and resonant? Do you think they are more universal then plays about brothers (I do not think I would read myself into a play about brothers).
My Mother is one of three sisters, and her mother was one of three sisters. So that shape is sort of in my DNA. I am drawn to it. I think the triangle of the three sisters in plays is so interesting. It’s not about competition. It’s not about who is going to win. It’s about how each sister is an individual inside of this particular shape. So the tension I think is there between the self and the group. Whereas maybe the brother’s play is about the self versus the self??? But as you said, I’m only child—so all of that is just a guess.
How much of Plano is in there, or your chosen sisterhood with Plano cast mates and best friends Susannah and Miriam?
I wasn’t thinking of it consciously when I started the play. I was really thinking of my own family. It’s really about these generations of women in my family. But then also of course it’s about what I let my imagination do with those women, which I am sure IS informed by the waters of Plano and those women who were my own sisters in it for so long; it’s fair to say once those waters pass through you like that in such a particular way they are a part of everything you write or act—plays are cumulative like that. The Borges reference IS a subtle but direct homage to Plano. Once I realized that I was writing this triangle shape myself, I wanted that link there as a secret sign post—kind of like a thread running through things.
Are other plays in there? I feel like I sniff a little bit of Antlia Pneumatica, Anne Washburn’s which you and I were in together at Playwrights in 2016.
That play is also set in a very specific place. You feel the place IN the writing, in the rhythms. I love that about that play. There were off-stage children in that play also! I think they may have even been hammering something????
You wrote this play while sequestered up in the mountains during the lockdown (and shared it in our early-career writers’ group zooms, which were a total lifeline and also I forget everything that happened via zoom). Do you have a sense of what a pandemic play is and whether this is one?
I was working on one play in the group and then when I got to that house, and I was there with all these memories and ghosts, I stopped writing that play and wrote this one, very quickly. I don’t think I would have written it without that group and those zoom sessions. It was a link to the real world. But I also don’t think I could have written that play if I hadn’t been so isolated. I was alone in this place that was a part of my childhood, but I was there, really for the first time, without any of the people normally there! It allowed me to see the place and them more clearly.
What made you choose to make the children invisible?
Who wants to cast a real child?!! Maybe it was some meeting of that practical problem with the sense of the unseen that I was beginning to investigate. I don’t remember exactly. But I can imagine it being a moment where the limitations of theater were very helpful in clarifying for me what I was exploring in the play. And also…everyone was gone. Theater was gone. That whole part of my life was invisible—just totally on pause. I hadn’t really thought of it until now, but that may have been part of the impulse—to express this huge, huge, gap. In that sense I do think it was very much a pandemic play.