Moving Forward with the Play Development Laboratory

Have had a series of meetings over the last weeks with Adam Greenfield, Director of New Play Advancement at Playwrights Horizons, whose organizational skills has Diana weeping in admiration ( I'm impressed too, but she has to bear the brunt of my cluttered brain).

We have put together a nice clean process for our play development laboratory, so beautiful in its orderliness that I told Adam I didn't want to muck it up with actual programming. We have a few more practical hurdles-- minor, we think. The next step is choosing the projects, which is some of the fun part. Adam, his assistant Alec and Ann Thayer, who we have hired as the project manager, are a delight and the meetings are probably too enjoyable. I look forward to working with more of the Playwrights staff as we get into this.

So our big plan: 5 week-long play labs, monthly, from November-early April. Being frugal donwtowners, Clubbed Thumb will program development projects of our own in the unused block of the rehearsal time for each of these labs. So! We'll be developing at least 11 projects from September-April (and on either side producing). Time to read some plays.


--Maria Striar, Clubbed Thumb