The story
Clubbed Thumb's first production was dragged fitfully to the stage by the four members of a semi-regular bridge game in the snowbound winter of 1996: Meg MacCary, Maria Striar, Arne Jokela (Joe), and Jay Worthington. The House of Candles (fondly remembered as the 'House of Firetraps') was rented, roles were divvied up (Meg starring, Maria directing, Joe and Jay designing, as it turned out), dozens of friends were enlisted, and what would become Clubbed Thumb's provocative and influential Summerworks series was born.
The name was chosen by Meg while completing paper work, after she selected a book on palmistry off Maria's shelf,and ecnountered a diagram labeled, "clubbed thumb". The term has an additional significance in the context of Victorian palmistry, in which a clubbed thumb was described as lacking the phalange associated with reason. Individuals with clubbed thumbs were also characterized as willful and patinate and the feature was sometimes referred to as the murderer’s thumb.
It was a gleefully arbitrary act of naming, but its strange suggestiveness has proved an suitable match for Clubbed Thumb's theatrical sensibility.
Summerworks' original structure was similarly born of somewhat arbitrary limitations: The House of Candles was rented for a month, but Clubbed Thumb's first play was short and the run limited by Actors' Equity to sixteen performances. So colleagues and former classmates were asked if they had anything they’d like to show. To maximize the use of the rental, time slots at 8pm, 10pm, and occasionally midnight were scheduled. Thus, the 90-minute play limit – half-an-hour for set change.
Clubbed Thumb's institutional and seasonal formation also developed ad hoc, ever-adapting to the artistic needs of the work at hand. ("We’re always rearranging our pile of nickels", Maria likes to joke.) This flexibility served: Summerworks swiftly established its reputation as a new-play series with an emphasis on formally innovative (even specifically difficult) structures and fully dimensional roles for actors of both genders. Meg and Maria quickly fell into co-directorial roles.
In addition to the four founders, major contributions were made by Erich Strom (2000–2002) and Ian Helfer (2000–2003) to the board and creative team, as well as staff members from over the years: Michael Levinton (2004 - 2007; 2018–Present), Diana Konopka (2006 - 2011), Nora DeVeau-Rosen (2011 - 2014), Sarah McLellan (2014 - 2018) and Quinn Metal Corbin (2018–2020).
Meg and Maria shared responsibilities as co-directors from 1996 to 2009. Meg decided to move on from her full-time duties with Clubbed Thumb in 2009 to fully commit to acting. Having paused his original professional trajectory for Clubbed Thumb, Jay relinquished his day-to-day involvement to return to the law in 2003. Joe (Arne) carried on in a part-time capacity until 2009, when he officially joined the board, eventually stepping off the board in 2018. Clubbed Thumb is currently run by Artistic Director Maria Striar and Producing Director Michael Bulger. Clubbed Thumb was the inaugural Resident Company at Playwrights Horizons beginning in 2014.
Clubbed Thumb remains purposely in flux, continually evolving to serve the work and its artists.
From Wikipedia’s article on Clubbed Thumb, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4