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| Photo: Peter Bellamy |
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Erin Courtney. Ms. Courtney's plays have been produced or developed by Clubbed Thumb (Demon Baby, Pricked, Summer Play, Downwinders), The Public Theater (Demon Baby), The Vineyard and BRIC (Alice The Magnet), The Flea (Mother's Couch), The Actors Theater of Louisville (Owls), and Soho Rep (Quiver And Twitch). She has been a fellow at the MacDowell colony, a recipient of a NYSCA grant and a MAP Fund grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and a member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director lab. She is published by Playscripts, Inc. and her play Owls is published by Smith and Kraus in Humana Festival 2001: The Complete Plays. As an undergraduate, Ms. Courtney studied with Paula Vogel at Brown University and as a graduate student she studied with Mac Wellman at Brooklyn College. She currently teaches playwriting at Brooklyn College and is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb. She is also a member of 13P, as well as the co-founder of the Brooklyn Writer's Space. |
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Comedy/Drama
Full-length, 70-80 minutes
3 females, 3 males, 1 either (7 actors possible: 3-4 females, 3-4 males)
$75.00 per performance; $19.95 per book
NOTE: This play is part of an anthology called Funny, Strange, Provocative: Seven Plays from Clubbed Thumb.
An American couple, Wren and Arthur, are relocated to London. As Arthur becomes immersed in his new corporate lifestyle, the previously outgoing Wren retreats into an agoraphobic state, frozen by her fear until she is visited by a demon baby in the form of a garden gnome. This impish gnome inspires Wren to try to connect in her new surroundings, even if her attempts -- a seduction, a dinner party, and a near-fatal game of pinata -- are bizarre and deeply misguided. Demon Baby is a comic and surreal exploration of alienation, culture shock, and the meaning of identity.
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| "It's Courtney's nuanced script that allow the actors to shine... Her lighthearted dark comedy is powered not by tired truisms of a disaffected wife's psyche, but by seismic social disconnection." |
| --Jessica Branch, Time Out (New York City) |
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$19.95 per book
NOTE: This book contains 7 plays. To perform any of the plays, each must be licensed separately.
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.
To purchase this book of 7 plays, click "Add to Shopping Cart" above. To perform an individual play, click on its title below:
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
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| "This anthology represents the jazziest, most edgy writers in contemporary American drama today. And Clubbed Thumb has more nerve, more guts, more class per square inch than any not-for-profit small theatre in New York. Reading these writers makes me want to go back to my own computer and try harder, dare more, and storm the barricades for funding for this rising generation." |
| --Paula Vogel, Pulitzer-winning author of How I Learned to Drive |
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