NEW YORK CITY: Clubbed Thumb has announced the schedule for its 21st annual Summerworks, the theatre’s festival of new plays. The lineup will include full productions of works by Julia Jarcho, Eric Dufault, and Ethan Lipton. All shows will be presented at the Wild Project. Later in the summer, the theatre will also coproduce an encore run of Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats at Playwrights Horizons.
The festival will begin with Every Angel Is Brutal by Jarcho. The play is a comic thriller in which three American college students are recruited to serve their country undercover in Berlin. Knud Adams will direct.
Following will be The Tomb of King Tot by Dufault, directed by Portia Krieger. The play is inspired by comic strips and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Summerworks will close with Tumacho by Lipton. The play is set in the Old West, where the citizens of a frontier outpost are looking for a hero to fight the local villain. Leigh Silverman will direct.
In addition, Clubbed Thumb will coproduce an encore production of its 2015 Summerworks hit Men on Boats at Playwrights Horizons (July 19–Aug. 14). Backhaus’s play is an account of the 1869 expedition to map the Colorado River, with the men played by female and trans* performers.
Clubbed Thumb holds readings and workshops throughout the year, culminating in a festival of full-length productions in the summer. It has produced the professional debuts of Rinne Groff, Sylvan Oswald, Clare Barron, Susan Stanton, and Ariel Stess, as well as world premieres from Anne Washburn, Adam Bock, Gregory Moss, Jenny Schwartz, Ethan Lipton, Erin Courtney, and Sheila Callaghan.
