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
Farting Drill by Milo Cramer
For me, watching Not Not Jane’s was an extremely joyous full-body experience – head to toe! – like the fabric of the universe is being ripped open, and we’re invited to step thru – into another universe (bought on a debit card?) – where we can celebrate and mourn our silly lives – and discover new vocabularies for talking about the hidden, hard, and mysterious parts of ourselves.
The play invites nay demands we enter a space of DEEP, DEEP LISTENING – after listening that deeply for 90 minutes (every new word a surprise), I walked away in a buzzing state of heightened attention – newly re-grateful – shaken! – the play is like an encounter with a strange unknown animal – one feels one is discovering a new species of flower or beetle – and the beetle is staring at you, it’s curious about you, no now it’s judging you, it’s asking you probing questions about yourself. Who could “review” a beetle? What is the “point” of a beetle? It’s a whole living beetle! With 6 legs and 4 eyes and it’s blue.
I guess I feel like: our world right now is obviously so so bad, it’s old news, it’s almost redundant to describe how bad things are – and Mara’s play offers in response an unhinged commitment to (for lack of a better word) magic. A magic that exhumes pain. I have certainly dug deep holes for myself – how to get out of them??? If only there were chairs! I certainly have some kind of Mother Wound – is there a more accurate word for it?? If only we could find the proper word? I know my mother has a Mother Wound too. And my relationships have been, alas, convenient. This whackadoodle play is too true.
In one charmingly self-aware moment, the play playfully accuses itself of being “word jazz” – and I remember, years ago, some fancy person critiquing a (different) play (by someone else) (but of the same family tree) by calling it “word salad” – and I just wanna sayyy, as someone who has spent many hours struggling to create meaningful writing – I don’t think what Mara is doing is word jazz or word salad – I think it’s unbelievably rigorous and specific. Word triathlon. Word churning word milk into word butter. Piercing our thick veil of boring collective exhaustion/fear/self-protection and cruel normalcy requires a powerful spell or a farting drill and here it is, Mara’s got it. We are all so so weird – weirder than we get to acknowledge. And grief is more painful and idiosyncratic than can be realistically described. Ditto RAGE. I feel in Mara’s blistering “word jazz” an intense and hungry but deliberate and careful reaching towards some sublime and heretofore unimaginable healing space, or a deeper and more honest vocabulary for talking about how to all be in a family with each other.
In conclusion, I am a baby made of poop, and I’m crying out for love, but I don’t know what love is, is it attention? Is it money? Mara’s play made me think about this!! In our tidy tidy world with strict strict rules, even aesthetically, Mara’s play insists on space, on opening vast spaces. Take off your mask. I stubbornly go to The Theatre hoping all my dumb ancient baggage and oppressive daily blahblahblah will be touched, rearranged, blessed, tickled, destroyed, shared, transformed. No one knows how to do this – everyone’s just guessing. But mission accomplished today 5/28/25 at the dress rehearsal of Not Not Jane’s, 2:30pm in 440 Lafayette Street room 3a.