SPINDLE SHUTTLE NEEDLE, BODIES THEY RITUAL and More Announced for Clubbed Thumb's SUMMERWORKS Festival

Clubbed Thumb has announced the complete line-up for the 25th annual SUMMERWORKS, its festival of new plays. SUMMERWORKS will run May 15 - July 1, 2020 at The Wild Project (195 E. 3rd Street) in Manhattan and will feature productions of three new plays: SPINDLE SHUTTLE NEEDLE by Gab Reisman and directed by Tamilla Woodard; BODIES THEY RITUAL by Angela Hanks and directed by Knud Adams; and THE WOMAN'S PARTY by Rinne Groff and directed by Tara Ahmadinijad.

Clubbed Thumb made its Broadway debut last spring with Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me, which premiered at the 2017 Summerworks festival, in partnership with True Love Productions. The play continues its national tour in Chicago in March and April 2020.

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 24 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 2020 line-up includes:

SPINDLE SHUTTLE NEEDLE

By Gab Reisman

Directed by Tamilla Woodard

MAY 15 - MAY 27

In a cottage surrounded by endless siege, at the dawn of Modern Capitalism, a motley group of women tell tales, pick nits, and stretch out the last bits of sustenance til the Market reopens.

Gab Reisman's plays explore the ways place writes itself on our bodies, sometimes using history as a prism to poke at current zeitgeist. Interested in the liminal and irreverently political, she examines what it means to sit on the doorstep of some big, uncertain change. Gab has developed work with Fusebox Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, Sundance Theatre Lab, and The Playwrights' Center among others. She's received commissions from the Humana Festival, Clubbed Thumb, EST/Sloan Project, the NOLA Project, New Plays at Barnard and ZACH Theatre. Gab has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, Orchard Project alum, NNPN Playwright in Residence, and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. Besides her own work, she builds immersive and devised performances in non-traditional spaces, most recently with the Austin-based collaborative Underbelly, utopia-based trio Bender/Mars/Reisman, and her own incubator Brooklyn Yard, Gab is currently writing an adaptation of The Seagull set in the contemporary Gulf South.

Tamilla Woodard is the BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater, the co-founder of PopUP Theatrics and currently serves as the associate director of Hadestown on Broadway. This season her work includes Where We Stand by Donnetta Lavinia Grays for WP Theater and Baltimore Center Stage, Caryl Churchill's Top Girls at American Conservatory Theater and direction and co-conception of Warriors Don't Cry, a Co-production of The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts and TheaterWorksUSA. Other recent work includes Men on Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus at American Conservatory Theater; American Dreams by Leila Buck at The Cleveland Public Theatre; PolkaDots: The Cool Kids Musical at Atlantic Theatre Company; (Off Broadway Alliance Award) and the critically acclaimed immersive 3/ Fifths by James Scruggs (3-Legged Dog). Her work has been seen at Classical Theatre of Harlem, Working Theater, Salt Lake Acting Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and at many festivals and theaters internationally. She is a graduate of Yale School of Drama and a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.

BODIES THEY RITUAL

By Angela Hanks

Directed by Knud Adams

JUNE 2 - JUNE 13

A Santa Fe sweat lodge lets loose what's bottled up in a group of Texan ladies who have gathered for a birthday celebration. Will any of them taste that deep, deep spirituality only to be found in the American Southwest?

Angela Hanks is from Dallas, Texas. Her plays have been produced, read or developed at Clubbed Thumb, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Flea Theater, Playwrights Horizons, and New Georges. Her play, Wilder Gone (NYT Critic's Pick), was in Summerworks 2018. Bodies They Ritual is a Clubbed Thumb 2017 Biennial Commission.

Knud Adams. The Headlands (Christopher Chen, LCT3), Paris (Eboni Booth, The Atlantic), Notes on My Mother's Decline (Andy Bragen, Play Co.), Tin Cat Shoes (Trish Harnetiaux, Clubbed Thumb), Marie and Bruce (Wallace Shawn, JACK), Nylon (Sophia Alvarez, Theaterlab), Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen (Eliza Bent, Abrons), The Workshop (Torrey Townsend, Soft Focus), Asshole (Justin Kuritzkes, JACK), Every Angel is Brutal (Julia Jarcho, Clubbed Thumb), Tom & Eliza (Celine Song, JACK), and Snore (Max Posner, Juilliard). Knud is an alumnus of the Drama League Next Stage Residency and Directing Fellowship, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the Playwrights Horizons Directing Residency, and Kenyon College. www.knudadams.com

THE WOMAN'S PARTY

By Rinne Groff

Directed by Tara Ahmadinijad

JUNE 19 - JULY 1

1947 is the year that the savvy politicos of the National Woman's Party finally get the ERA passed- once they quash that insurgency. Or oust the old guard. Failure is Impossible.

Rinne Groff is a long-standing Clubbed Thumb affiliated artist. Her plays and musicals have been produced at The Public Theater, Berkeley Rep, Playwrights Horizons, Trinity Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Yale Rep, and the Women's Project, among others, in the United States and internationally. Rinne is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Obie Award grant. Founding member of Elevator Repair Service Theater Company. New Dramatists alum. Dramatist Guild member. Head of Playwriting in the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.

Tara Ahmadinijad is a director and co-founding member of live arts collective Piehole. Recent work: Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks, NY Times Critic's Pick, returning with PlayCo March 2020) and Chana Porter's Leap and the Net Will Appear (New Georges in NYC; Catastrophic Theater in Houston). With Piehole: Disclaimer, written by Ahmadinejad (The Public's Under the Radar 2020), Tread on Me, Tread Softly (collaboration with Celine Song, in development), and collaborations in AR and VR with the LA-based Tender Claws: Tendar (Sundance 2018) and The Under Presents (Oculus, Sundance 2019). NYTW Usual Suspect; Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship; New Georges Affiliated Artist; MFA Columbia University.

Clubbed Thumb's previously announced return engagement of Tumacho is currently in performances at the Connelly Theater (220 E. 4th Street) for a limited run through Saturday, March 21.

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 Tumacho at the Connelly Theater are available for $99.

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