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Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays from Clubbed Thumb
This anthology includes seven plays produced by Clubbed Thumb, the Obie Award-winning downtown New York City theater company that burst onto the new play scene in 1996. Edgy and thought-provoking, each play is funny, strange, and provocative in surprising, widely varying ways -- including an apartment that both adores and despises its inhabitants in Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), a metropolitan housewife who senses that something is watching her in 16 Spells to Charm the Beast, and a group of traveling freak show performers who reveal a deep humanity underneath their crowd-drawing deformities in Freakshow, among other uniquely inventive stories. For over a decade, Clubbed Thumb has had its finger firmly planted on the pulse of new work, and these plays prove it."
Includes the plays The Typographer's Dream by Adam Bock, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Sheila Callaghan, Demon Baby by Erin Courtney, 16 Spells to Charm the Beast by Lisa D'Amour, Inky by Rinne Groff, Dearest Eugenia Haggis by Ann Marie Healy, Freakshow by Carson Kreitzer
Includes the plays The Typographer's Dream by Adam Bock, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Sheila Callaghan, Demon Baby by Erin Courtney, 16 Spells to Charm the Beast by Lisa D'Amour, Inky by Rinne Groff, Dearest Eugenia Haggis by Ann Marie Healy, Freakshow by Carson Kreitzer
- GenresPlays
316 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 21, 2013
As the name Clubbed Thumb suggests and the cover promises, strange was to be expected. Funny and provocative were nowhere to be found, though. And granted, this is really not my sort of thing and these plays were much too abstract for my taste or maybe my tastes were too pedestrian for these plays, but most of them were just so...out there in that WTF way. As a reader I have certain reasonable expectations, I want to be entertained, interested, surprised, enlightened...these plays, with notable exception of the last one, just didn't do that. Yes, they can be and probably have been praised as avantgarde, original, daring, etc., but to me that didn't seem enough to warrant quality. After the novelty of, well, novelty wears off the substance is much too insubstantial to enjoy.
September 28, 2026
A lot of it made me feel weird and I think that is the point. CT here I come!!
July 18, 2008
Clubbed Thumb is a New York-based theater company; it is an organization devoted to showcasing works by emerging, experimental American playwrights. Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays from Clubbed Thumb collects several plays that exemplify Clubbed Thumb’s innovative repertoire.
The term “voice” is often overused or incorrectly applied, but this is precisely what connects the anthology’s seven plays. Each play offers a unique vision, yet the works share definitive stylistic similarities. For example, all of the plays explore the possibilities of language, and there is a close relationship between language and music. The dialogue in a Clubbed Thumb play reads as lyrical. The language is alternately something you can dance to, a force in which---like cosmic quicksand---you can sink, dissolve, and completely disappear. The language makes you smirk, roll your eyes, cringe, and for writers it also inspires us to push our linguistic limits further.
In Sheila Callaghan’s play Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), the dialogue reads like lines of poetry. The play’s main characters are Janice, an eleven year-old girl who serves tea parties with bleach, Janice’s mother, and The Apartment where they live. The play is set at Christmastime, one year following the tragic death of Janice’s father. (He fell out an open window while adjusting the angel on top of a Christmas tree.) Janice’s dialogue combines songs and fantasy, all fueled with injections of acid. The Mother often speaks in incomplete sentences; her grief and disconnection from the world are apparent through her words. Because of this, a poetic style emerges from her lines. When the Mother is expressing her concern about Janice to Barbara, The Mother’s sister, she says, “her (Janice’s) voice tilts with a purple cast/and sometimes her hair is wire/And sometimes her breath is yellow/Napalm/like rotting fruit and stomach acid/as though she swallowed a pear months ago/but can’t digest it.”
I’ve always been attracted to narratives that explore the absurd, but too often these works value style over substance. Absurdity can often be used as an excuse for a cheap joke, but the absurdity itself doesn’t illuminate deeper issues of character, plot, or thematic development. The true genius in Crumble is that Callaghan shows absurdity as the only path to emotional understanding. Indeed, Sheila Callaghan and David Lynch cook their soup in the same Dutch oven, and Callaghan includes an eclectic mix of ingredients. Crumble describes headless dolls stuffed with explosives, celebrity obsessions, Christmas lists that request raw meat, and a barren woman who lives with fifty-seven cats. Callaghan’s work is hilarious, but the absurdity is always underscored with overwhelming themes of rotting, disintegration, and loneliness. The characters in Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) act in extremities so that others might notice their suffering and grief. The play is an intelligent, creative, heartbreaking, and raucous meditation on survival, connection, and pop culture.
I chose to explore Callaghan’s play, but the other six plays in Funny, Strange, Provocative are all similarly brilliant. This is an excellent anthology to read and discover talented, maverick playwrights. There is, however, one significant drawback: Reading these plays will make you want to purchase the first plane ticket to New York and check out, firsthand, the experience of watching a Clubbed Thumb play.
The term “voice” is often overused or incorrectly applied, but this is precisely what connects the anthology’s seven plays. Each play offers a unique vision, yet the works share definitive stylistic similarities. For example, all of the plays explore the possibilities of language, and there is a close relationship between language and music. The dialogue in a Clubbed Thumb play reads as lyrical. The language is alternately something you can dance to, a force in which---like cosmic quicksand---you can sink, dissolve, and completely disappear. The language makes you smirk, roll your eyes, cringe, and for writers it also inspires us to push our linguistic limits further.
In Sheila Callaghan’s play Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), the dialogue reads like lines of poetry. The play’s main characters are Janice, an eleven year-old girl who serves tea parties with bleach, Janice’s mother, and The Apartment where they live. The play is set at Christmastime, one year following the tragic death of Janice’s father. (He fell out an open window while adjusting the angel on top of a Christmas tree.) Janice’s dialogue combines songs and fantasy, all fueled with injections of acid. The Mother often speaks in incomplete sentences; her grief and disconnection from the world are apparent through her words. Because of this, a poetic style emerges from her lines. When the Mother is expressing her concern about Janice to Barbara, The Mother’s sister, she says, “her (Janice’s) voice tilts with a purple cast/and sometimes her hair is wire/And sometimes her breath is yellow/Napalm/like rotting fruit and stomach acid/as though she swallowed a pear months ago/but can’t digest it.”
I’ve always been attracted to narratives that explore the absurd, but too often these works value style over substance. Absurdity can often be used as an excuse for a cheap joke, but the absurdity itself doesn’t illuminate deeper issues of character, plot, or thematic development. The true genius in Crumble is that Callaghan shows absurdity as the only path to emotional understanding. Indeed, Sheila Callaghan and David Lynch cook their soup in the same Dutch oven, and Callaghan includes an eclectic mix of ingredients. Crumble describes headless dolls stuffed with explosives, celebrity obsessions, Christmas lists that request raw meat, and a barren woman who lives with fifty-seven cats. Callaghan’s work is hilarious, but the absurdity is always underscored with overwhelming themes of rotting, disintegration, and loneliness. The characters in Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) act in extremities so that others might notice their suffering and grief. The play is an intelligent, creative, heartbreaking, and raucous meditation on survival, connection, and pop culture.
I chose to explore Callaghan’s play, but the other six plays in Funny, Strange, Provocative are all similarly brilliant. This is an excellent anthology to read and discover talented, maverick playwrights. There is, however, one significant drawback: Reading these plays will make you want to purchase the first plane ticket to New York and check out, firsthand, the experience of watching a Clubbed Thumb play.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 16, 2008
The quality of each of these plays is high, but the style and my interest in them varies with each play.
INKY and DEAREST EUGENIA HAGGIS are closest to naturalistic plays. I enjoyed INKY though it's scope and depth are a bit on the shallow side. DEAREST, on the other hand, has emotional depth and complicated characters, but is missing something to make it entirely pop.
While FREAKSHOW was relatively naturalistic but the world of the play is so engrossing and the talking torso has such fun scenes that it makes up for it and made it enjoyable.
The other four plays are more stylistically out there. TYPOGRAPHER'S DREAM studies its characters and the theatrical event itself (a panel discussion). CRUMBLE (LAY ME DOWN, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE) takes a lot of chances, such as having the family's house played by an actor and have someone play one of the most recognizable pop stars in the world. The fact that there is an emotional connection with the characters though is what holds it together. DEMON BABY is a sideways and eliptical note in tune with Rosemary's Baby. And 16 SPELLS TO CHARM THE BEAST is a lovestory and clearly not at the same time, taking some obvious cues from La Belle et la Bete and set in a New York that might be or maybe has become.
INKY and DEAREST EUGENIA HAGGIS are closest to naturalistic plays. I enjoyed INKY though it's scope and depth are a bit on the shallow side. DEAREST, on the other hand, has emotional depth and complicated characters, but is missing something to make it entirely pop.
While FREAKSHOW was relatively naturalistic but the world of the play is so engrossing and the talking torso has such fun scenes that it makes up for it and made it enjoyable.
The other four plays are more stylistically out there. TYPOGRAPHER'S DREAM studies its characters and the theatrical event itself (a panel discussion). CRUMBLE (LAY ME DOWN, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE) takes a lot of chances, such as having the family's house played by an actor and have someone play one of the most recognizable pop stars in the world. The fact that there is an emotional connection with the characters though is what holds it together. DEMON BABY is a sideways and eliptical note in tune with Rosemary's Baby. And 16 SPELLS TO CHARM THE BEAST is a lovestory and clearly not at the same time, taking some obvious cues from La Belle et la Bete and set in a New York that might be or maybe has become.
May 12, 2009
I bought this book for Lisa D'Amour's "16 Spells to Charm the Beast," which is fantastic. I'm overwhelmed by (and envious of) the high quality of writing throughout the anthology, and fascinated by the emergence of an aesthetic which the writers and the company share (I guess I'd call what these writers are doing a sort of neo-magic-realism).
AND YET
The anthology as a whole lacks something. The plays are all about personal relationships (either unrequited or barely-requited love stories, or mother-daughter relationships). Not even the faintest mention of politics anywhere (D'Amour's play comes the closest, with its odd evocations of shifting Manhattan real estate deals) -- and in a collection of plays produced in the USA during the years 2000-2006, that troubles me. I don't need every play I see/read to include politics, but zero out of seven?
Intentionally or not, Clubbed Thumb is making an assertion here about the role of political thinking in theatrical experimentation, and I lost patience with that assertion years ago. The world is full of interesting people who have interesting problems. I can only be distracted by fictional people with fictional problems for so long. One play, sure. Not an entire anthology. Not an entire aesthetic.
AND YET
The anthology as a whole lacks something. The plays are all about personal relationships (either unrequited or barely-requited love stories, or mother-daughter relationships). Not even the faintest mention of politics anywhere (D'Amour's play comes the closest, with its odd evocations of shifting Manhattan real estate deals) -- and in a collection of plays produced in the USA during the years 2000-2006, that troubles me. I don't need every play I see/read to include politics, but zero out of seven?
Intentionally or not, Clubbed Thumb is making an assertion here about the role of political thinking in theatrical experimentation, and I lost patience with that assertion years ago. The world is full of interesting people who have interesting problems. I can only be distracted by fictional people with fictional problems for so long. One play, sure. Not an entire anthology. Not an entire aesthetic.
April 27, 2009
I am reading a play called FREAKSHOW by Carson Kreitzer. It is interesting, and there are some great monologues, but I'm not sure they would work outside the context of this play. The characters are hugely strange. I think it would be an interesting piece to work on. I know there is a small company in Portland doing it this season.
6/11 - Finished "The Typographer's Dream" -- which is more like Beckett than the playwright thinks -- he thinks it is hyper realistic, but I absolutely couldn't read it that way.
6/11 - Starting "Crumble". Loved that the apartment was a character, but the rest of the play didn't move me.
9/14/11 - Read "Demon Baby". Love that there is a garden gnome who is a character, and that it is about American Expats in London. Unsatisfying finish, though.
10/18/11 - Read "16 Spells to Charm the Beast". Perhaps linked to "Beauty & the Beast"? but mostly a pointless plot, however, there are some fabulous aspects, including 21 children all represented by small objects.
4/16/12 - Read "Inky". An Eastern European nanny and a dysfunctional couple. Not good.
6/11 - Finished "The Typographer's Dream" -- which is more like Beckett than the playwright thinks -- he thinks it is hyper realistic, but I absolutely couldn't read it that way.
6/11 - Starting "Crumble". Loved that the apartment was a character, but the rest of the play didn't move me.
9/14/11 - Read "Demon Baby". Love that there is a garden gnome who is a character, and that it is about American Expats in London. Unsatisfying finish, though.
10/18/11 - Read "16 Spells to Charm the Beast". Perhaps linked to "Beauty & the Beast"? but mostly a pointless plot, however, there are some fabulous aspects, including 21 children all represented by small objects.
4/16/12 - Read "Inky". An Eastern European nanny and a dysfunctional couple. Not good.
June 23, 2009
In an era where theatre is struggling desperately to keep audiences interested by presenting new work that is "different", Clubbed Thumb has captured the essence of excellent play-making. Their formula is simple: produce plays that are "funny, strange, provocative", hence the title of this collection featuring seven plays representative of their work.
This is a company I hope to see around for a very long time...
This is a company I hope to see around for a very long time...
November 26, 2007
i picked up this collection solely for "The Typographer's Dream" by Adam Bock (one of my new favorite playwrights) and i was pleasantly surprised with the entire collection. very inventive, strange, interesting plays...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews