What's Happening!

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • OUR 2024 SEASON HAS COME TO AN END

    The last six months were the busiest in our history. We started with Winterworks at Houghton Hall in January, followed by six weeks of Grief Hotel at the Public in the spring, and we rounded it all out with Summerworks at the Wild Project, where we managed to cram in 47 performances over seven weeks.

    Some of you saw it all, some just a piece, and some met our work for the first time. We were thrilled to share it with all of you.

    Here are some photos and essays from the season, to tide you over until we have work to share again in the fall (or when we see you at our gala honoring dots!)

    Lastly: We had our most successful season at the box office ever. If you were there, you know it was full to overflowing. And you might remember that your ticket was pretty affordable—maybe even free. That’s important to us.

    But what that means is, even when we sell out all the time, tickets only cover a fraction (about 1/7th) of what it all costs, especially considering we pay people better every year (That’s important to us too!)

    Throughout the year, we support hundreds of artists, mostly early in their careers, whether in our writers or directors groups, readings, workshops, commissions, retreats, or in production. So, if you can, make a donation today and be a part of our effort to pay artists, to make beautiful, affordable work, and to do it even better next year!

  • ANNOUNCING SUMMERWORKS 2024

    We’ll be back at the Wild Project May 16th through June 29th with the 27th iteration of SUMMERWORKS, featuring: Usus by T. Adamson, directed by Emma Miller; Coach Coach by Bailey Williams, directed by Sarah Blush; and Find Me Here by Crystal Finn, directed by Caitlin Sullivan. Tickets on sale now! Learn more & get yours here

  • GRIEF HOTEL'S MAGNIFICENT ENCORE RUN AT THE PUBLIC THEATER

    We were thrilled to bring Summerworks 2023’s Obie-winning hit production Grief Hotel back for a six-week run at The Public Theater, in partnership with our friends New Georges. It was very special to dig back into the play and production with the exceptional group of artists who made it, and such a joy to share it with so many more people. We had a tremendous run – sold out, extended and beloved by critics and audiences – thank you to all who attended and to all who made it possible. CLICK HERE TO READ ESSAYS AND MORE ABOUT THE SHOW

  • 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

Work Retreat in a Rental Home: Some Thoughtwork on Coach Coach
by T. Adamson

“I know any work I need to do on my business is work I need to do on myself,” admits Patti, the resident Wealth and Business Coach at Dr. Meredith Martin’s Action Coach Academy for Thinking Coaches. The Action Coach Academy is a self-styled “work retreat,” and that this phrase represents a somewhat nefarious oxymoron never seems to occur to any of the characters we meet during the incredibly hilarious, uncanny afternoon which playwright Bailey Williams has concocted for us.

The characters in Coach Coach cannot escape from- and perhaps are only subconsciously aware that they exist in- a dystopian world that consistently professionalizes the human experience and transforms personalities into brands, interests into specializations, relationships into networking opportunities, and personal traumas into professional qualifications. The space in which this work retreat occurs at first appears homey, anachronistic, and specific, but we are repeatedly reminded that it is a rental – that its atmospherics are incidental to an inhospitable and capricious business model which defies all seeming logic – and that this rental is also awkwardly wedged inside a No Man’s Land between an anonymous airport (representing commerce, travel) and an equally anonymous national park (representing aesthetics, nature, and perhaps even the world of the spirit). Everything and everyone in the play is reframed in terms of marketability and business function. The characters in the play are not even given liberty to think; instead, they engage in what Dr. Martin has lovingly branded “thoughtwork.” They are always on. And they must always be on because they are not just entrepreneurs selling life-coaching services- they are also the product being sold.

When Arthur Miller was asked in an interview what it was that Willy Loman actually sold in Death of a Salesman, Miller replied “himself.” In a similar way, the coaches in Coach Coach market and sell cultivated images of themselves which might be enticing to their desired clientele, but which also create personal crises for the salespeople when their products are no longer selling. To me, that divide between the part of us that sells and the part of us that is sold manifests in the creepy doubling that persists throughout this play: in Patti’s opening monologue, in the hilarious one-on-ones we witness during the morning work sessions, and even in the play’s title.

I believe this theme of doubling goes even deeper when we consider the campy style the play is presented with- that we are never allowed to forget that this play is, in fact, a play. Throughout, the actors exhibit a kind of self-awareness that the characters are not permitted, a self-awareness that is liberating to watch for someone who works in the “entertainment industry,” where professionals are, like the coaches, encouraged to develop personal branding, network incessantly, always be on, and engage in the paradoxical act of selling authenticity (or at least the idea of authenticity, whatever that means). Given the mental pressure these characters have been put under, it seems inevitable that they erupt into violent and ludicrous behavior towards the end of the play. After all, their seemingly composed behavior at the start is only a fragile veneer built to mask the violence and ludicrousness they feel inside.

It’s to Bailey’s credit as a playwright that these characters- although they might lack language to express it- feel themselves tormented and fragile and fragmented, because underneath all the euphemistic professional jargon and thoughtwork, they are still people. They still live and die and hunger for something more substantial than a lame corporate salad. They are victims of a mysterious and fatal wasting disease known as late capitalism- sometimes curable, sometimes not- and they sense, at least on some level, that what they desperately need and want and love and fear and remain hopelessly entrenched in, is each other. Not as professionals, but as people. “Life/work balance”, “self-care”, “mental health”, “personal growth”, and, to paraphrase Dr. Martin, “even feminism”- any nourishing thought, or thoughtwork, can be repurposed and fed into the professionalizing machine. But there remains a part of the psyche that resists this systematization- that remains, like Coach Coach itself, funny, scary, passionate, idiosyncratic, blessedly self-aware, unpredictable, unique.