Clubbed Thumb Announces Full Line-Up For 24th Annual SUMMERWORKS Festival

Five-time Obie Award-winning theater company Clubbed Thumb (Maria Striar, Producing Artistic Director; Michael Bulger, Associate Artistic Director; Quinn Metal Corbin, Advancement Director) is proud to announce the line-up for SUMMERWORKS, its annual series of new plays. Now in its 24th season, SUMMERWORKS will run May 17 through June 29 at The Wild Project (195 E 3rd Street) in Manhattan, and will feature productions of three new plays: LUNCH BUNCH by Sarah Einspanier and directed by Tara Ahmadinejad; YOU NEVER TOUCHED THE DIRT by Zhu Yi and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll; and KING PHILIP'S HEAD IS STILL ON THAT PIKE JUST DOWN THE ROAD by Daniel Glenn and directed by Caitlin Ryan O'Connell.

Festival passes start at $55 and are on sale now at https://www.artful.ly/clubbedthumb/store/passes. Festival passes that also include a ticket to Clubbed Thumb's return engagement of Plano at the Connelly Theater this April are available for $99.

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. Clubbed Thumb makes its Broadway debut this spring with Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me, which began at SUMMERWORKS in 2017 and begins performances at the Helen Hayes Theater on March 14.

Highlights from the previous 23 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 works by Anne Washburn, Adam Bock, Gregory Moss, Jenny Schwartz, Ethan Lipton, Erin Courtney, Sheila Callaghan, Tanya Saracho, Jaclyn Backhaus, and Heidi Schreck. All of these artists continue to make Clubbed Thumb an artistic home.

Past SUMMERWORKS directors include Pam MacKinnon, Lee Sunday Evans, Lear deBessonet, Anne Kaufman, Davis McCallum, Leigh Silverman, and Ken Rus Schmoll.

The full SUMMERWORKS 2019 line-up includes:

LUNCH BUNCH

By Sarah Einspanier

Directed By Tara Ahmadinejad

MAY 17 - MAY 28

Seven public defenders on a frenzied quest for the perfect lunch--whilst battling ACS, inequality, burn out, and a big ole serving of existential dread. A play about our struggle for meaning, belonging, some semblance of order and the unexpected places we seek them.

Sarah Einspanier is a playwright from Dallas, TX. Select plays include Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb's Winterworks), I LOVE SEAN (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow), The Convent of Pleasure (Cherry Lane's Mentor Project with Sheila Callaghan), House Plant (Horton Foote Scholar at Sewanee Writers' Conference with Naomi Iizuka), and MADONNA col BAMBINO created with composer Deepali Gupta and director Caitlin Sullivan (Ars Nova's ANT Fest and the New Ohio's Ice Factory, curated by New Georges). Her work has also been developed and presented by Ars Nova's Play Group, Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers' Group, the New Georges Jam, a New Georges Special Residency, New York Theatre Workshop's Mondays @ 3, and Williamstown Theatre Festival's Directing Studio. She has been a resident at the Millay Colony, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and Stratford New Works Lab, and has participated in Erik Ehn's annual Texas Silent Writing Retreat.

Tara Ahmadinejad is a NY-based director and theater-maker. She is a core-founding member of Piehole, whose work has been developed and produced at New Ohio/IRT's Archive Residency, JACK, Irondale, LMCC's Workspace Residency, The Drama League, New York Theatre Workshop, and HERE, among others. Tara's current new play collaborations include Chana Porter's Leap and the Net Will Appear (Houston premiere: Catastrophic Theatre; NYC premiere upcoming: New Georges June 2019), and new projects in development with Daaimah Mubashshir and Julia Sirna-Frest (New Georges Audrey Residency), and Celine Song (in collaboration with Piehole). Tara recently directed for The Under Presents, a VR experience incorporating live theater, by LA-based company Tender Claws, in collaboration with Piehole (Sundance 2019). Piehole previously collaborated on Tender Claws' augmented reality piece TendAR (Sundance 2018). In addition to directing, Tara has taught theater-making workshops to undergraduates in the US and in Tehran, Iran. NYTW Usual Suspect; Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship; MFA Columbia University.

YOU NEVER TOUCHED THE DIRT

By Zhu Yi

Directed by Ken Rus Schmoll

JUNE 3 - JUNE 13

The Li family would be enjoying their new lake-view luxury villa outside of the city, were they not surrounded by the gardeners, maids, and security guards who had once owned the land--not to mention the Gods, ghosts and unnamed spirits there for thousands of years before them. A play about economic transformation, the dreams it enables and those it crushes.

Zhu Yi is a New York-based playwright, born and raised in Shanghai, China. MFA in playwriting, Columbia University. Her plays have been performed in various languages in Asia, Europe and Americas. She received the First Prize at 2015 World Sinophone Drama Competition, and Shanghai Drama Valley's 2015 Outstanding Playwright of the Year Award. She is an alumni of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Obie Award-winning playwrights group Youngblood, a 2012-2013 Emerging Artist Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, a member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, The Royal Court Theatre's International Playwrights Programme, and Clubbed Thumb's early-career writers group. Recent productions include A Deal (Urban Stages, NYC), I Am a Moon (National Performing Arts Center of China), How Time Flies (National Theatre of China), Holy Crab! (Wellspring Theater, Taipei; Círculo de Tiza, Monterrey), Apene i Himalaya (Hålogaland Teater, Tromsø), and Long Distance Affair (Bienal Arte Joven Buenos Aires). Zhuyizhuyi.com

Ken Rus Schmoll is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, co-creator of its directing fellowship, and director of its productions of Erin Courtney's Demon Baby, Jordan Harrison's Amazons and Their Men, Kristin Newbom's Telethon, Ethan Lipton's Luther, and Kate E. Ryan's Card and Gift. Most recently he directed Nia Vardalos's Tiny Beautiful Things at the Long Wharf Theatre, Mia Chung's Catch as Catch Can for Page 73, and Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman's Gone Missing for Encores! Off-Center. He is the recipient of two Obie Awards.

KING PHILIP'S HEAD IS STILL ON THAT PIKE JUST DOWN THE ROAD

By Daniel Glenn

Directed by Caitlin Ryan O'Connell

JUNE 19 - JUNE 29

The councilmen of Plymouth Plantation fight about what the Good life is- all the while displaying the head of Wampanoag leader Metacom on a spike. A play about government, mercy, vengeance and America's original sin.

Daniel Glenn is a high school English teacher. He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he won the Lipkin Prize for Playwriting. His musical swingset/moon, co-written with Alex Gemignani, was a finalist for the National Music Theatre Conference and the Richard Rodgers Award. Residencies include the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Texas State University. He is the recipient of an Idea Capital grant and the author of Romeo and Juliet Revised, published by YouthPLAYS.

Caitlin Ryan O'Connell is a freelance director and teaching artist based in Brooklyn. She has developed work at Bushwick Starr, Ars Nova, The Lark, Roundabout, Fault Line Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Trinity Repertory Company, and the Denver Center. Caitlin teaches at Playwrights Horizons Theater School, Powerhouse Theater Training Company, The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, The Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Center, Roundtable Senior Center, and with the International Theatre Project in Rwanda. Caitlin was a 2018 New Georges Audrey Resident, a former Clubbed Thumb directing fellow, and a former Actors Theatre directing apprentice. BA Wellesley College, MFA Brown/Trinity Rep.

Clubbed Thumb's previously announced return engagement of Plano will begin performances on Monday, April 8 at the Connelly Theater (220 E. 4th Street) for a limited run through Saturday, May 11. Opening night is set for Saturday, April 13.

Clubbed Thumb commissions, develops and produces funny, strange and provocative new plays by living American writers. Since its founding in 1996, the company has earned five Obies including the Ross Wetzsteon Award for sustained artistic excellence. We have presented plays in every form of development, including over 100 full productions.

Clubbed Thumb is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additionally, Clubbed Thumb receives major support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Shubert Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, SEG Voices, and the Mental Insight Foundation.

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