Clubbed Thumb Sets Lineup for 20th Annual SUMMERWORKS, Kicking Off in May

Five-time Obie Award-winning theater company Clubbed Thumb has announced the line-up for SUMMERWORKS, its annual series of new plays. Now in its 20th season, SUMMERWORKS will run May 20th through June 29th at The Wild Project (195 E 3rd Street) in Manhattan, and will feature productions of three new plays: D DEB DEBBIE DEBORAH by Jerry Lieblich, directed by Lee Sunday Evans; CARD AND GIFT by Kate E. Ryan, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll; and MEN ON BOATS by Jaclyn Backhaus, directed by Will Davis. Festival passes are now on sale at https://www.artful.ly/clubbedthumb/store/passes.

With its track record for discovering and supporting new playwriting talent - in many cases providing writers with their very first production in New York or anywhere - SUMMERWORKS is one of the most eagerly-anticipated theatrical offerings of the year.

Highlights from the previous 19 festivals include the NYC premieres of Gina Gionfriddo, Jordan Harrison, Lisa D'Amour, Jason Grote and Sarah Ruhl; professional debuts of Rinne Groff, Sylvan Oswald, Clare Barron, Susan Stanton and Ariel Stess; and new work by Anne Washburn, Adam Bock, Gregory Moss, Jenny Schwartz, Ethan Lipton, Erin Courtney and Sheila Callaghan, who all continue to make Clubbed Thumb an artistic home.

Past SUMMERWORKS directors include Pam MacKinnon, who also serves as Clubbed Thumb's Board Chair, Lear deBessonet, Anne Kaufman, Davis McCallum and Ken Rus Schmoll.

The full SUMMERWORKS line-up for 2015 includes:

D DEB DEBBIE DEBORAH
By Jerry Lieblich
Directed By Lee Sunday Evans

A creepy intruder, a needy boyfriend and a stalled-out career are shaking Deb's already wobbly sense of self. Her latest assistant gig, and the strange project it entails, just might topple her. D Deb Debbie Deborah is a voyage into a bizarre and unsettling world where losing your identity means losing it all.

Jerry Lieblich is a Brooklyn-based playwright. He is a current member of Page 73's Interstate-73 Writers Group, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Smith + Tinker (HERE Arts Center), an Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, and is the writerly half of the devising team Tiny Little Band. His plays include D Deb Debbie Deborah (Soho Rep W/D Lab), Ghost Stories (PRELUDE.14), Untitled Tech Startup CEO Piece (THROW at The Chocolate Factory), Nostalgia is a Mild Form of Grief (|the claque| Reads, Pipeline Theater Company), Eudaemonia (not just 3 New Plays), and 1927 (Ars Nova ANT Fest). He has been a finalist for the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship and the Heideman Award (Actors Theatre of Louisville). He also writes regularly for Culturebot, is a published scientist, and used to work at a zoo. BA: Yale.www.tinylittleband.com

Lee Sunday Evans is a director and choreographer. Upcoming: So Go the Ghosts of Mexico, Part II by Matthew Paul Olmos (Baryshnikov Arts Center Resident Artist). Credits include: A Beautiful Day on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes by Kate Benson, The Play About My Dad by Boo Killebrew, God's Ear by Jenny Schwartz, All Girls by Anna Greenfield, The Deepest Play Ever by Geoffrey Decas O'Donnell, The Momentum, and Family Play (1979 to Present) by CollaborationTown, The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht with original music by Nicholas C. Williams. Her work has been presented and developed at: 59E59, Sundance Theater Lab, MacDowell, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The New Ohio, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Culture Project, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, Dixon Place, LaMama, Emerging America Festival/Huntington Theater, Williamstown Theater Festival, Juilliard Drama Division, Coatesville VA Medical Center. With CTown, she is currently developing a new musical for New Victory's LabWorks commissioning program. Time Warner Fellow of 2014-2016 Lab at Women's Project Theater, Lincoln Center Director's Lab, New Georges Affiliated Artist, Sponsored Artist at Makehouse. BFA: Boston University.

CARD AND GIFT
By Kate E. Ryan
Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll

It's Primary Season, and the country may be changing, but for Lila and Annette--stuck in a small town shop in New Hampshire--everything seems frozen. In Card and Gift, the employees outnumber the customers, the price labels are out of date, and the tourists don't come anymore. Does it really matter who wins the presidency?

Kate E. Ryan is a playwright living in San Francisco. She recently wrote the book for the musical Hundred Days (winner, 2014 Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding New Musical), produced by Z Space in San Francisco, directed by Anne Kauffman with music/lyrics by The Bengsons. She is a Resident Playwright at Playwrights Foundation (San Francisco) and a former member of Just Theatre's Writer/Director Lab (Berkeley). Formerly based in New York, her plays have been produced or developed by 13P (Mark Smith, directed by Ken Rus Schmoll), Clubbed Thumb (Design Your Kitchen, Dot), The Flea, Soho Rep, Target Margin (Women of Trachis), and The Vineyard. She is an Affiliated Artist with Clubbed Thumb. She is former Co-Chair of the Writer/Director Lab at Soho Rep and former Co-Curator of the performance series Little Theatre at Tonic. Her career has received support from sources including California's Creative Capacity Fund. BA from Kenyon College, MFA from Brooklyn College (MacArthur Graduate Scholarship).

Ken Rus Schmoll is a freelance director, primarily of new plays, whose New York credits include The Invisible Hand and Red Dog Howls at New York Theatre Workshop; Grounded for Page 73; Not What Happened at BAM Next Wave; Luther, Telethon, Amazons and Their Men, and Demon Baby for Clubbed Thumb; The Peripherals for the Talking Band; A Map of Virtue (Obie Award, Special Citation), Mark Smith, Aphrodisiac, and The Internationalist for 13P; FUREE in Pins and Needles and Telephone (Obie Award for Direction) for the Foundry Theatre; Middletown, and The Internationalist at the Vineyard Theatre; What Once We Felt at LCT3; Miss St.'s Hieroglyphic Suffering at the Guggenheim; October/November at Ensemble Studio Theatre; Hello Failure at PS 122; Millicent Scowlworthy and Honor and the River for SPF; and Cause for Alarm at the NY Fringe. Regional credits include Love in the Wars at Bard Summerscape; The Grown-Up and Death Tax at the Humana Festival; Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England at Two River Theater; and Aphrodisiac at the Long Wharf. Opera/new music credits include It Happens Like This at Tanglewood and the Guggenheim, and Proserpina for Spoleto Festival USA. He is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, a usual suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, a three-time Sundance Theatre Institute alum, and co-chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Upcoming: Iowa at Playwrights Horizons.

MEN ON BOATS
By Jaclyn Backhaus
Directed by Will Davis

Ten explorers. Four boats. One Grand Canyon. Men on Boats is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River.

Jaclyn Backhaus is a playwright based in Brooklyn. She is a member of Clubbed Thumb's Falcons, where she developed her play Men on Boats (SuperLab with CT/Playwrights Horizons). She is also a co-founder of Fresh Ground Pepper, a non-profit that serves artists, and the resident playwright for Theater Reconstruction Ensemble. Plays for TRE include You On The Moors Now (HERE Arts Center, February 13-28, 2015), Set in the Living Room of a Small Town American Play (Walker Space/Semifinalist, O'Neill Conference), and Three Seagulls or MASHAMASHAMASHA! (HERE). Other credits include The Incredible Fox Sisters (2014 Ice Factory Festival), Shoot the Freak (Not Just 3 New Plays), and F Train (Woodshed Collective's Empire Travel Agency). Her musical works with director Andrew Neisler and composer Mike Brun include Folk Wandering (Ars Nova/Joe's Pub) and the forthcoming Bull's Hollow trilogy. She is a member of the 2014-2015 Civilians R&D Group. BFA: NYU. www.fgpnyc.com

Will Davis is a director and theatre maker focused on physically adventurous new and devised work. Recent projects include Mike Iveson's Sorry Robot for PS122's COIL Festival; Bright Now Beyond, a new musical with Daniel Alexander Jones; and two productions of Colossal, written by Andrew Hinderaker, for Mixed Blood Theater and the Olney Theatre Center. Will has developed, directed, and performed his work with New York Theatre Workshop and the 2050 Fellowship, the New Museum, the Olney Theatre Center, the Alliance Theatre, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), the Fusebox Festival, Salvage Vanguard Theater, New Harmony Project, the Orchard Project, The Gift Theatre, Red Tape Theatre, Performance Studies International at Stanford University, and the Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop. Will is nominated for a Helen Hayes award for his production of Colossal at the Olney Theatre Center, a current member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and also dances with The Ballez, a Brooklyn-based queer ballet company. Will holds a BFA in Theatre Studies from DePaul University and an MFA in Directing from UT Austin.

SUMMERWORKS is running May 20th through June 29th at The Wild Project, located at 195 E. 3rd Street, New York 10009 - between Avenues A and B in Manhattan's East Village. A full schedule will be announced soon. Festival passes are on sale now for $45 at https://www.artful.ly/clubbedthumb/store/passes.