Word on the street is that if you’re a young playwright starting out today, you’re a little too late to the party. Decades ago, there was an influx of funding into Off-Broadway labs, residencies, fellowships and grants; these supported a generation of theater artists who could hone their voices, get produced, and refine their skills—and this spawned a kind of Golden Age in the American Theater in the 2010s. Today, while many of these artists have moved on to Broadway or Hollywood, the system that first supported them has all but collapsed, post-pandemic. Both production and ticket costs have risen, audiences have disappeared, funds have faded, grants have been rescinded, theaters have closed, seasons have shrunk. If you’re just now showing up, you may get lucky enough to snag a warm LaCroix or a cold slice of pizza, but generally speaking: the party’s over.
In this narrative, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks feels like a kind of exuberant afterparty, blissfully carrying on despite the times. De facto Cool Kid of The American Theater (if said Cool Kid dressed in a kilt and only spoke in Pig Latin), Clubbed Thumb is like an oddball straggler at the party who, miraculously, keeps finding shrooms in their pocket and announcing: Ollowfay emay everyoneyay!
Each summer, the seemingly tireless Artistic Director-Founder Maria Striar and Producing Director Michael Bulger bring together the brightest and weirdest from around town to put on three plays, and audiences cram into East Village’s tiny Wild Project to see them. This scrappy endeavor has birthed some of the most exciting theater of the last few years, from What The Constitution Means To Me—which went on to become a Tony Nominee for Best Play, a Pulitzer finalist, and the most produced play in the country for two years in a row—to Grief Hotel and Deep Blue Sound, which enjoyed critically-acclaimed encore runs at The Public.
Even before this latest crisis at nonprofits, Clubbed Thumb was one of a few theaters in town with a distinctive style. While other theaters mission-drifted towards homogeneity, you could actually read a new play and say, “This Is or Is Not a Clubbed Thumb play,” and be understood. Today, ever a champion for the formally adventurous, the eccentric, the unapologetically brainy—Summerworks’ significance has only grown. For a theater lover, it’s unmissable. For anyone who cares about the state of the industry, it’s an undeniable occasion for celebration.
But Summerworks’ most important function today is probably as a springboard for new talent, one of a handful of institutions giving substantive opportunities to early-career writers and directors. This summer, the shows are: Business Ideas, by Milo Cramer, directed by Laura Dupper; Not Not Jane’s, by Mara Nelson-Greenberg, directed by Joan Sergay; and Cold War Choir Practice, by Ro Reddick, directed by Knud Adams. Three of these six artists are making debuts: playwright Ro Reddick, and directors Joan Sergay and Laura Dupper. Having worked with Joan and Laura and knowing them to be brilliant, I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Ro’s Cold War Choir Practice, a co-production with Page 73, is notable for being a play with music—Summerworks’ first since before the pandemic. And continued support for Milo and Mara—two of our most idiosyncratic voices—is also exciting. Milo’s recent Obie-winning School Pictures was named best show of 2023 by Vulture’s Sara Holdren, and Mara’s Do You Feel Anger? has amassed an almost cult-like devotion. They should be getting more productions. Director Knud Adams, for his part, returns downtown as a newly minted Tony Nominee for Best Director after directing English on Broadway. Pair this all with a bomb company of actors, designers, and stage managers—also a combo of vets and newcomers—and we know we’re in for a treat.
To top it all off, 3Views, fresh off its own Obie Award, has prepared a banging line-up of critics to engage with these plays. Three writers will cover each show, for a total of nine reviews. At a time when theater criticism seems to be going the way of play funding—drastically shrinking or disappearing altogether—this, too, is worth celebrating. (What is 3Views in the afterparty metaphor? Maybe a super smart group chat, thoughtfully analyzing, dissecting, recording its goings on for posterity.)
As old systems crumble, people are scrambling for solutions to make theater. Many of these are exciting, like the low-budget, high-quality work popping up at places like The Brick and The Tank. Other solutions, perhaps less so: in this new anarchic ecosystem, I’m haunted by the feeling that, now more than ever, we’re incentivized to spend more time marketing our plays than actually making plays worth seeing. At higher budget levels, A-list celebrities or their children are brought in to get butts in seats, or consulting companies are hired to rebrand seasons. Still, for now, Clubbed Thumb—with its unusual stories, unusually told—keeps its own party going.
