Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – The bold and the bizarre (and the very funny): A look back at the 2026 edition of Clubbed Thumb’s indispensable SUMMERWORKS series

• By drediman
• July 17, 2026
• No Comments

With a few weeks to digest, I thought now would be a good time to take a look back and assess the 2026 offerings of Summerworks, Clubbed Thumb’s indispensable incubator of new plays at the wild project, an intimate venue located deep in the Lower East Side. In many ways, this mini-festival has become the centerpiece of Clubbed Thumb’s annual programming, with its productions consistently selling out and often times subsequently transferring to bigger and more visible stages (some examples are the recent remounting of Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice at MCC Theater, and the widespread success of Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me). The folks behind Summerworks pride themselves on the series’ quirky curation, invariably choosing bold and bizarre (and very funny) new works that more often than not critique contemporary life. They also tend to be on the shorter side — 90-minutes or less seems to be the sweet spot — and, impressively, staged and acted with impeccable polish and style. That being said, not everything lands successfully, which is to be expected. But what can’t be denied is that the plays on display are never less than fresh and fascinating.

TITANS
By Jesse Jae Hoon
Directed by Tara Elliott

Summerworks 2026 shot out of the canon with Jesse Jae Noon’s Titans (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED). In short, the play is a depiction of the tribulations of an eclectic subset of citizens of an unnamed city, most notably their collective stance against an ICE-like organization that has been infiltrating their communities (note that the term “ICE” is not specifically mentioned in the work). Hoon takes his time expounding the lay of the land — laying out who the characters are, their interpersonal relationships, and their respective roles in the Sims-like cityscape that’s been created (the set is cleverly designed by Raphael Mishler). In hindsight, Titans is indisputably the most straightforward and least “weird” of this summer’s bunch. Although it tries to inject quirkiness by occasionally dabbling in some innocuous audience participation, it largely relies on a scrappy yet insistent sweetness to evoke its world, which counteracts some of the serious topics that it touches upon — the hardships of the immigrant experience, the dysfunction of civic operations, the aforementioned ICE raids, etc. Director Tara Elliott endeavors to inject buoyancy to the proceedings, only occasionally transcending the cartoon-like nature of the playwriting. Nevertheless, the cast does a pleasant job of conjuring a sense camaraderie and individuality.

DERANGEMENTS
By Nadja Leonhard-Hooper
Directed by Annie Tippe

Next up was Nadja Leonhard-Hooper’s Derangements (HIGHLY RECOEMMENDED), a deliciously inappropriate ode to people behaving badly — that is, our capacity for “derangements”, whether consciously or unconsciously. More specifically, the play unspools the interlocking life journeys of a group of loosely-connected people during the 1980s — namely two fair weather girlfriends, one of their gynecologist, a trigger-happy flasher without an ounce of self control they randomly encounter while having dinner, and a host of other offbeat denizens. As the play unfolds, its fever dream quality escalates and the events that transpire get weirder and weirder. Indeed, Leonhard-Hooper has conjured a world with a skewed sense of reality and demented internal logic. But despite its wicked and absurd sense of humor, Derangements manages to be both surreal and familiar, which ensures that audiences remain onboard for its rapid fire shenanigans. Directed by Annie Tippe with an anything goes madcap sensibility, the production, in my opinion, has perhaps the best potential to be picked up for a future life out of the three shows in assessment here. The acting was altogether top-notch — and unhinged in the best possible way. Particularly brilliant was Crystal Finn as a hilariously aloof woman whose tendency to misread every situation she’s in struck comic gold time and time again.

THE FAMILY DOG
By Bailey Williams
Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad

Lastly, closing out Summerworks 2026 was The Family Dog (RECOMMENDED) by Bailey Williams. The play chronicles the flailing attempts of a teetering dysfunctional family to keep intact through the eyes of, you got it, the family dog. To say the least, the family members are a mess — the patriarch is aloof and off having an affair, and the matriarch is overbearing and unstable. Their three emotionally stunted children are no better — one is put together but puts on morally superior airs, another is delusional and frustratingly complacent, and the last one is just straight out a douchebag. The only thing that ultimately bonds them is their mutual love of their aging dog — the only character who seems to be able to keep their cool — who is embodied onstage by an actor who spouts insights and comments on the action. As things disintegrate within the family and the disagreements get increasingly tense and irrevocably dire — which is paralleled by the decline in their dog’s health — a certain sameness starts to creep into the writing. That is, until we get to the play’s ravishing epilogue (no spoilers here!). Thankfully, the acting by the ensemble cast is wonderfully animated, while also imbuing the characters with much needed depth. The strongest aspect of the production is director Tara Ahmadinejad visually striking staging (kudos particularly to scenic designer Colleen Murray and lighting designer Masha Tsimring), arguably the most stylish of the trio of shows discussed here.