What's Happening!

  • 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

  • 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!

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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!

    CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO & TO BUY YOUR PASS NOW

  • 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. 

    Click here for photos, essays and a link to buy the play!

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

Keenan Tyler Oliphant

Keenan Tyler Oliphant is a Theatre-maker and Director from Cape Town South Africa. Keenan works at the intersection of Theatre, Performance and Storytelling. As a theatre-maker he recalls his traditional Southern African storytelling lineage by simultaneously exchanging with histories and futures to create spaces of healing, investigation, mourning and celebration through performance. His work is committed to destabilizing and decentering western form and philosophy by shattering the mythology of the proscenium, by either destroying it completely or bringing extreme attention to its construction. As the founder of Mixing Bowl Productions, an underground music theatre company that focuses on the promotion of alternate and contemporary music theatre works. Keenan has created and produced multiple works for the South African National Arts Festival. Keenan has directed collaborative pieces at festivals around New York including Dixon Place’s Hot Fest, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, The International Human Rights Arts Festival and the New Ohio Producers Club. He is a 2020/2021 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow and a 2021/2022 Drama League New York Fellow. He has served as second assistant director to Rachel Chavkin (Moby Dick; A.R.T), Raja Feather Kelly (We’re Gonna Die; Second Stage Theater) and as associate director to Anne Kauffman and Caitlin Sullivan on Bengson’s new work OHIO (St Ann’s Warehouse; workshop). BA: University of Cape Town; BMus: South African College of Music; MFA: Columbia University www.keenantyleroliphant.com

Three Sisters

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photo: Annie Wang

Three Sisters

Director
Columbia University Shapiro Theatre, 2018 

Trapped in a space they can’t survive, but can’t seem to leave, a family lives and dreams. As their world becomes increasingly claustrophobic, these dreams begin to fall apart around them. By submerging the privileged tensions of Chekhov’s Three Sisters in an artificially white vacuum, the production interrogates western ideology and asks: how can blackness exist inside this construct? The production is an exploration into black diaspora psychology. Particularly of people being taken away from their homeland, forced to live in another space and the through time the memory and experience of their home slowly fading away.

baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando

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photo: Annie Wang

baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando

Director and Creator
Columbia University Studio, 2019

In 1956, James Baldwin publishes his second novel, Giovanni’s room. It immediately becomes controversial because of its queer politics but more so because of its seeming lack of racial interrogation- but who is Giovanni? Lucien? Marlon? Baldwin? baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando is an immersive theatrical experience interrogating the way black bodies become mythologized-effectively removing the complexity and humanity of the lived experience in order to fit comfortably inside a heteronormative white social ideology. It is also an exploration of oppression and the complexities of normativity and otherness, by paying tribute to Baldwin’s work and his refusal to sit still.

Kyk Hoe Skyn Die Son [Look how the Sun Shines]

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photo: Dion Lamar Mills

Kyk Hoe Skyn Die Son [Look how the Sun Shines]

Director and Creator
Clubbed Thumb, Winterworks 2021

I look in your eyes through multiple screens and the distance between us feels so vast—Do you remember me? Can I reach out to you through words on a page? Can our spirits commune as you move towards the ancestors? I’ll sit. For 20 minutes. And write. To You. To the Spirit of You. And we will try. Try.Kyk hoe Skyn die Son [Look how the Sun Shines] is a multimedia conversation exploring preemptive mourning, distance, and the fragmentation of memory. Keenan Tyler Oliphant writes a letter, live and on-screen, to spiritually commune with his 86 year old Grandmother in South Africa who is slowly being taken by dementia. A collection of artists reimagine Oliphant’s memories, which stream over his attempt to write and create a kaleidoscope of grief, loss, and longing.

The Self-Combustion of a 30 something year old Chet; or, Icarus tries to catch the Sun

Director and Creator
New Ohio Producers Club, November 2020 (Virtual)

Chet is flying. Flying high. Above Freedom. Towards combustion. Towards the Sun.The Self-Combustion… is a performance poem investigating modern mythology and the freedom, privilege and corruption of White Patriarchy using the body and biography of the ‘mythical’ Chet Baker. The piece follows a mythical Chet Baker through a heroin high where he morphs with — and becomes — Icarus flying towards the sun. The piece reframes Baker’s biography as a myth that traps and frees Baker. Although it leads him to his ultimate demise and death, is this what he’s been wanting all along? Is this the ultimate freedom? To combust?