Stage Voices

FUNNY, STRANGE, PROVOCATIVE: 7 PLAYS FROM CLUBBED THUMB
edited by Maria Striar and Erin Detrick

“You are wondering if I have ever had sexual intercourse,” muses a comely female torso, addressing her audience for the first time.

A lonely apartment swoons for its inhabitants as a dreamy incarnation of Justin Timberlake gets all the attention.

Demon Baby, a gnome-like creature that looks like a middle-aged man, renders average citizens helpless while roosting atop their torsos.

If you, like I, have been zonking out at the kitchen sinks of various suburban homes as relatives and lovers get drunk and finally tell one another the truth, the plays in this Clubbed Thumb anthology will snap you awake line by line, image by image and play by play. And if you’re lucky, they’ll pull you through that sink spigot, twist you through the maze beneath and push you out the other side transformed.

If you’re not already familiar with the anthology’s articulate and intriguing authors – including Carson Kreitzer, Erin Courtney and Sheila Callaghan, whose plays are mentioned above – you should be; Clubbed Thumb has an impeccable ear for talented voices. As a group, these authors are enamored with, not encumbered by, language and form. They play with ferocity and experiment with glee but don’t sacrifice substance for style. Their plays are energetic, clever, fun, raw and above all, truthful.

Ultimately, though, you should read these plays because they are a reflection of a restless, changing world — not content to remain in one place and dwell on what is. They sing, thrash and lunge toward their next incarnation, away from the standard proscenium, toward new possibility, toward what can be.

Scenes/Monologues: Both, especially for those looking for something atypical, challenging (i.e. not for a commercial audition).

Recommended by: Matthew