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
Just Beneath the Brightness: Thoughts on Cold War Choir Practice by Mara Nelson-Greenberg
When my sister was in first grade and I was in kindergarten, her teacher taught her class a song that they would sing together each day before leaving school. It was called Celtic Pride: “Celtic Pride! Feeling the green down deep inside. Celtic Pride! We’re gonna get them back one more time…” I wasn’t in my sister’s class, but the ritual of singing this song with my sister and all of her friends was so irresistible to me that I learned all the lyrics and I’d join in during pickup. I wanted to belong with the belongers—because look at how much fun the belongers were having!
My time as a Celtic’s fan was cut blessedly short when I moved to Brooklyn at the end of the school year (go Knicks), but I was revisiting that memory as I watched Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice. The play tells the story of a Black family in Syracuse living through the Reagan era—and at the top of the play, the daughter of the family, Meek, has joined a nationalist, all white children’s choir.
MEEK
Choir Leader says / a long
range intercontinental ballistic missile…
CHOIR LEADER
A long range intercontinental ballistic missile takes only
thirty minutes to reach the United States from the Soviet Union.
MEEK
That’s why our concerts are exactly twenty-eight minutes long. /Just in case…
CHOIR LEADER
Just in case a missile launches when we start.
MEEK
We’d still have two minutes to hug our families before we die.
But Meek slowly realizes the real danger isn’t a nuclear threat from abroad—it’s the more insidious and ubiquitous violence in the country she actually lives in. After all, the power of indoctrination is not just in the positives, the set of beliefs actively impressed upon a group. It’s in the negatives, too: the parts of reality that are not just left unacknowledged, but are pushed aside and sublimated with cheery messaging and distraction. Meek’s choir leader explains to the group of children, with all the seriousness of a teacher leading a friendly story time, that “the Soviets have “over 40,000 nuclear warheads in their stockpile: ballistic missiles, MIG 21s, MIG 23s…” Meek’s father Smooch quickly offers a rebuttal: “I don’t know why you worried ‘bout them Russians. The FBI just bombed a bunch of Black folks in Philly.”
But it takes a long time for the implications of all of this danger to catch up with the audience. This is the magic of the play. It’s zippy, vibrant, cheerful, and really, really fun. I had a kind of goofy smile plastered across my face for the entire show, even as I braced for impact. And so as Ro exposes the inner workings of indoctrination, she uses its mechanisms on the audience, allowing the play itself to lull you into a kind of submission. And she manages to do this even as you’re fully aware that there’s a palpable danger constantly thrumming just beneath the brightness. We know we shouldn’t, but we lose sight of what all this danger actually means.
Which is how I found myself blindsided by the very painful interpersonal fallout of all of these encircling threats. When Smooch’s brother Clay, a Black Republican with a high-ranking position in Reagan’s cabinet, returns home with his ailing wife, he spars repeatedly with Smooch over his unwavering commitment to a President and a country that has never protected their family. Amidst their fighting over conflicting ideologies, Clay tells Smooch he gave his brother the roadmap to success, and Smooch exclaims: “I don’t need a fuckin’ roadmap! I need my brother! Where the fuck you been, man? Huh? Where the fuck you been?” I couldn’t shake that moment for the entire rest of the play. Aligning yourself with the dominant group does not only distract you from and make you complicit in perpetuating real harm. It separates and isolates you from the people you love. It’s just as Choir Leader told us: Twenty-eight minutes for your country, two minutes for your family. Until they’re one and the same.
The play ends with Meek, her father and her grandmother sitting around a Christmas tree. The Choir sings about Gorbachev and the Speak + Spell the Soviets used to communicate with Meek is still playing its three toned melody. But for this moment, the family is together, telling a story at Christmas.