The Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission
The Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission — a $15,000 prize to write and develop a play for Clubbed Thumb — was created to encourage the writing of plays that consider the relationships between truth, power, history, and personal responsibility. For each commission, Clubbed Thumb asks a question or poses a theme to serve as a jumping-off point for this examination. The inaugural theme for year 2005-2006 was "Yamashita's Gold;" for 2007-2008, it was "The Tragedy of the Commons." The next Commission theme and application guidelines will be announced in 2009.
For the 2007-2008 Commission, we received 251 submissions (more than 3 times the quantity of the inaugural year). In a blind adjudication process, a panel of readers chose Andy Bragen's Ranch Home as the winning proposal.
Set in the Arizona desert and a pool outside a house in the Phoenix exurbs, Ranch Home lives in a landscape of enormous contrast between the unbearably hot outdoors, and the climate controlled indoors, between the rugged desert terrain, and the manicured lawns and golf courses. There isn't enough water to go around, and what is viewed by many as a just entitlement, the right to have a lawn and swimming pool, to have green golf courses and air conditioned homes, is ecologically unsustainable. In the wake of her brother's suicide, Laurie, a college dropout, her grief-stricken father, and her step-brother, plump, pimply and pampered Petey, are stuck in their huge, white house when the pool starts mysteriously draining...
Andy Bragen, a graduate of Brown University's MFA Program in Literary Arts, recently completed a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. Other honors include a New Voices Fellowship from Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, and residencies at Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center. Andy attended the 2004 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference where he workshopped Spuyten Duyvil. Greater Messapia was produced at Queens Theatre in the Park in March 2004 as part of the theatre's Immigrant Voices Project. Sweet Dreams of Paris received a workshop production in February 2005 as part of the Brown/Trinity New Plays Festival. Food Porn received a workshop production at Brown in April 2006. Also a translator, Andy works directly from French and Spanish, and with a co-translator from the Japanese. His co-translations from the Japanese have been workshopped at the last two Playlabs Conferences at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. Other plays and translations have been presented in various forms at numerous theatres in New York and elsewhere, including The Guthrie Theatre, Ars Nova, Rattlestick, LAByrinth, EST, Repertorio Espanol, Soho Think Tank, NYU's hotINK Festival, The Illusion Theatre and the Lark Theatre. More information is available at www.andybragen.com.