Clubbed Thumb Announces Complete SUMMERWORKS Lineup

Tony Award-nominated and Obie Award-winning theater company Clubbed Thumb will present the complete line-up for the 28th SUMMERWORKS festival of new plays. SUMMERWORKS will premiere three new plays and run from May 14 – July 1, 2025.

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

To meet the festival's demand, Clubbed Thumb will now offer two additional performances for every show featured in the SUMMERWORKS lineup this year.

The full SUMMERWORKS 2025 line-up includes:

Business Ideas

Written by Milo Cramer

Directed by Laura Dupper

May 14-27, 2025

A mother-daughter duo tenuously clinging to middle-class status brainstorm get-rich-quick schemes to pay for college while their exhausted yet somehow lovable barista tries and fails to find more gainful employment. A rags-to-rags comedy about desperation and service work.

Milo Cramer's Obie-winning solo show School Pictures has been featured on NPR's This American Life, and produced at The Wilma in Philadelphia, Latte Da in Minneapolis, and

Playwrights Horizons in New York, where it was named the #1 show of 2023 by Sara Holdren in Vulture. Other works include Cute Activist at The Bushwick Starr with Clubbed Thumb (“a brilliant match of material and theater...a fable for our times” – The New York Times), Minor Character with New Saloon at The Public Theater / Under the Radar, and Business Ideas, originally developed by Clubbed Thumb and Mabou Mines, winner of the 2024 Kendeda Award at The Alliance Theater in Atlanta. Milo is a MacDowell Fellow, a UCSD MFA, and an Aries.

Laura Dupper is a NYC based director originally from Tennessee. She has worked at Manhattan Theatre Club, Signature Theatre, Second Stage Theater, LCT3, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Drama League, HERE Arts, Dallas Theater Center, Columbia University, NYU, Ars Nova, and Playwright's Horizons; she has also worked with Playwrights Realm, Barrington Stage, P73. Some favorite assisting credits include The Minutes and Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts, Morning Sun by Simon Stephens, and Stereophonic by David Adjmi. Last year, she was the Associate Director on the Tony award winning production of Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. She was a 24/25 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow and directed Jeana Scotti's A Necessary Killing for Winterworks. Laura has her Master's in Social Work and BFA from Southern Methodist University.

Untitled Mara Nelson-Greenberg Play

Written by Mara Nelson-Greenberg

Directed by Joan Sergay

June 2-13, 2025

A young woman gets a grant to start a community center—but at her mom's house. A play about being at the whim of billionaires, pornos-with-no-sex, and trying to get a piece of the pie.

Mara Nelson-Greenberg's work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Berkeley Rep, and ACT Theatre, among others. Her play Do You Feel Anger? premiered at the 2018 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was produced at the Vineyard Theatre in 2019. She is a former member of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers Group, and a recipient of the Vineyard Theatre's 2023 Paul Vogel Playwriting Award. She received her MFA from UC-San Diego.

Joan Sergay is a Brooklyn-based director of new work. Joan has directed and developed work with Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, Ensemble Studio Theater, Lucille Lortel Theatre, PBS, No Guarantees, Nouveau Productions, The TEAM, Colt Coeur, Geffen Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Westport Country Playhouse. On Broadway, Joan has served as the US Associate Director to Sam Mendes on The Hills of California by Jez Butterworth, as well as the Associate Director to Rachel Chavkin on Lempicka. Joan has been a resident artist at New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, and the cell theatre. She has held directing fellowships at Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. Joan is a New Georges Affiliated artist, a member of SDC, and an alum of Northwestern University. www.joansergay.com

Cold War Choir Practice

A Co-Production with Page 73

Script, Lyrics + Music by Ro Reddick

Directed by Knud Adams

June 19-July 1, 2025

A prominent Black conservative brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays, setting long simmering tensions with his estranged family to boil. A fugue of Reaganomics, espionage, roller disco, and cults—underscored by the Syracuse, NY chapter of the Seedlings of Peace Children's Chorus. 

Ro Reddick is a queer Black playwright and songwriter. She writes off-kilter comedies (mostly); the theme songs to your late capitalist nightmares. Ro is a member of the 2025 Page 73 Writers Group, a  2024-2025 DGF Playwriting Fellow and Playwrights' Center Core Apprentice. She is also under commission at People's Light Theatre for their new Queerways PA commissioning and residency program. Her plays have been workshopped/developed/read with Clubbed Thumb/Page 73, Trinity Rep, The Ground Floor (Berkeley Rep), Bushwick Starr Reading Series and Williamstown Theatre Festival (NYC Reading). Other fellowships, residencies, and honors include Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination 2025 (Cold War Choir Practice), Venturous Fellowship Nomination (Throwback Island), Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting, Adele Kellenberg Seaver Fellow in Creative Writing at Brown University, La Mama Umbria International Playwright Retreat, Miranda Theatre Company Playwright Grant, and 3x O'Neill Finalist. As an actor, Ro has performed at theaters including Hartford Stage, McCarter Theatre Center, Long Wharf, and KC Rep; Off-Broadway in Silence! The Musical, and on screen in “The Americans,” “Louie,” and “SATC 2.” As a singer she has performed and co-written songs for a country, rock, and blues band. She also writes original songs for her plays and is an alum of the BAI Songwriting Workshop. In addition to her MFA in Playwriting from Brown, Ro has an MBA from NYU (which she has no intention of using).

Knud Adams is an Obie-winning director of artful new plays, based in New York City. He recently directed the acclaimed Broadway debut of Sanaz Toossi's English, which Variety hailed as “one of the best plays of the decade.” He is the only director to have premiered consecutive Pulitzer Prize winners: English and Eboni Booth's Primary Trust. Additional world premieres include: The Book of Mountains and Seas, I'm Revolting, Bodies They Ritual, The Headlands, Paris, Tin Cat Shoes, The Workshop, Asshole, and Tom & Eliza. Knud's productions have been celebrated on "Best of the Year" lists by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, New York Magazine, New Yorker, and Washington Post. Knud is a Clubbed Thumb Affiliated Artist.

Festival passes start $75 and are on sale now at: ci.ovationtix.com/36616/store/packages. Casting, full creative teams, and the venue will be announced at a later date.

SUMMERWORKS follows Clubbed Thumb's extended, sold-out run of the Obie Award-winning Deep Blue Sound, which premiered as part of SUMMERWORKS 2023. Written by Abe Koogler and directed by Arin Arbus, this return engagement ran from February 25 through April 5 at The Shiva Theater at The Public Theater.