Clubbed Thumb's Announces Summerworks 2005

By: Mar. 16, 2005
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Acclaimed theatre company Clubbed Thumb is proud to present their 10th annual summer festival of new plays, Summerworks 2005. The entire festival takes place at The Ohio Theatre (66 Wooster Street btwn. Spring and Broome) beginning with the festival opening night artstar party on May 4th ay 8 PM and ending this whirligig of a month with their last mainstage production on May 28th. Tickets are $15/ $12 for students for mainstage productions. All other events are FREE! To purchase tickets in advance call SmartTix at 212.868-4444 or go to www.smarttix.com. For more information, go to www.clubbedthumb.org or call 212.802.8007.

Summerworks nurtures new plays in different ways, by presenting two Boot Camp development workshops, three mainstage productions and, special to this year's 10th year anniversary, an evening of past playwrights' short pieces around the theme of "10" at the opening night party. Participating playwrights include Lisa D'Amour, Brooke Berman, Rachel Sheinkin, Bridget Carpenter, Jeff Jones, Karl Gajdusek, Joe Lo Truglio, Brighde Mullins, Ann Marie Healy, Sheila Callaghan, Jan Munroe, Kate E. Ryan, and more. This year's three mainstage productions are:

100 Aspects of the Moon

By Ethan Lipton, directed by Emma Griffin (the Artistic Director of the OBIE award-winning Salt Theater: Charles Ludlam's Conquest of the Universe, Zippo Songs: Airs of War and Lunacy, Stage Door - FringeNYC Excellence Award as Best Director - and in co-production with Clubbed Thumb - Rinne Groff's Inky). Inspired by the work of 19th-century woodblock-printmaker Yoshitoshi, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon is a very sad comedy about the regularly scheduled failings of humanity. Deep-seeded resentment, lousy communication and misplaced love and violence ensue. Running May 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 at 8 PM

Madame Killer

By Honour Kane with Diana Kane, directed by Wier Harman (former executive director of the OBIE award-winning The Foundry Theatre, former artistic director of the Actor's Express in Atlanta). A Gothic noir about Ann Lohman who, upon her death in 1978, was a paradigm of capitalism, worth millions…but she had secrets. This fair doctor owned a black book filled with incriminating evidence about all the women she serviced over the years, striking fear in both rich and poor if this information ever got out! Running May 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 at 8 PM

Dearest Eugenia Haggis

by Ann Marie Healy directed by Melissa Kievman (Kelly Stuart's Mayhem for the SPF, and Julia Jordan's adaptation of Walk Two Moons at the Lucille Lortel in July of 2005; recently received the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors). Dearest Eugenia Haggis is a heartbreaking and extremely funny tale of three misfits scrambling for the scraps of love in the frozen outskirts. Running May 22, 23, 24 and 26, 27, and 28 at 8 PM.

This year the FREE reading series will be combined with the New Play Boot Camp, a weeklong workshop where Clubbed Thumb provides a playwright developing a play with a director and actors and they all develop the play together. The first Boot Camp reading will be of Everything You Have by Anna Zeigler on May 11th at 8pm. The second will be Iggy Woo by Alice Tuan on May 25th at 8pm.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:

Honour Kane's plays have been produced by the Public Theatre New Works, Sydney's Annual Mardi Gras Arts Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, BACA Downtown, New Georges, The Theatre Outlet in Allentown, PA, and Ireland's Inishbofin Arts Festival. Honour Kane—Bunting Fellow at Harvard/Radcliffe 2002—received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, support from Audrey Skirball-Kennis residencies at Lincoln Center and London's Royal Court, as well as a workshop at Minneapolis' Playlabs 1997 for the development of Madame Killer.

Ann Marie Healy's play NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL A STORM was produced by Edge Theater Company last spring. SOMEWHERE SOMEPLACE ELSE was produced in 2003 with Clubbed Thumb in New York and with Frontera/Hyde Park in Austin (winner of two 2002-2003 Austin Critics Table Awards). This spring, she will workshop her "song and dance" play WHEN HE GETS THAT WAY with the support of Soho Rep. Her writing is published through Samuel French, in various Smith & Kraus anthologies, and in The Kenyon Review. She was recently a resident writer at New River Dramatists in North Carolina where she worked on a new series of plays entitled THE HOUGHTON TRILOGY. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, and a member of MCC's Playwrights' Coalition and 13P.

Ethan Lipton's plays include MEAT (Drama-Logue Award) and HOPE ON THE RANGE. He was a part of Clubbed Thumb's Boot Camp program in 2004 and was a writer in residence with New York Stage and Film in 2003. Ethan has performed with Elevator Repair Service and Uber Dance Theater. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Ethan graduated from UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. He has been the resident playwright for Buffalo Nights Theatre Company since 1992 and has lived in Brooklyn, NY, since 1999. As a singer-songwriter, Ethan has performed his original old-time folk-lounge music all over NYC and elsewhere. NPR's "Weekend Edition" called his songs "twisted, dark, sophisticated, hilarious, schleppy and sad all at once." His debut album, "A New Low," was released in 2004.

Founded in 1996 by artistic directors Maria Striar and Meg MacCary, the OBIE Award-winning Clubbed Thumb has become one of New York City's foremost theater companies developing and producing new American plays. Productions have included Gina Gionfriddo's U.S. Drag (2002 Susan Smith Blackburn prize winner), Lisa D'Amour's 16 Spells to Charm the Beast, Erin Courtney's Summer Play and Downwinders, Carson Kreitzer's Freakshow, Deborah Eisenberg's Pastorale, Rinne Groff's Inky and Jimmy Carter Was a Democrat, and most recently the critically acclaimed production of Erin Courtney's Demon Baby.



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