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The Public Theater Welcomes
Clubbed Thumb's
GRIEF HOTEL
By Liza Birkenmeier
Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad
In partnership with New Georges
The Obie Award-winning production of GRIEF HOTEL from Clubbed Thumb's acclaimed Summerworks returns for a limited engagement at The Public.
Loss is fast, but grief is slow. Aunt Bobbi’s going to try to make everyone feel better, even though her parties are cursed.
Written by Liza Birkenmeier and directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, both of whom received Obie Awards for their work on this production, GRIEF HOTEL features the original cast: Susan Blommaert, Nadine Malouf, Bruce McKenzie, Ana Nogueira, Susannah Perkins and Naren Weiss.
Note: Clubbed Thumb is in residency at The Public. GRIEF HOTEL is not a Public Theater production.
Susan Blommaert
Aunt Bobbi
Susan Blommaert Some Theatre: The Metal Children, Mary Rose, Phaedra (Vineyard Theatre); Measure For Pleasure, Fucking A (The Public Theatre); Dr. Ride’s American Beach House (Ars Nova). Some Film: The Kitchen, John Wick 3, Doubt, United 93, Pet Sematary, Edward Scissorhands. Some TV: The Blacklist, New Amsterdam, Elementary, Louie, The Good Wife, The Sopranos, The X-Files and most recently, Dead Ringers.
Nadine Malouf
Em
Nadine Malouf Off-Broadway: Montag (SohoRep); The Vagrant Trilogy, A Bright Room Called Day (The Public). Dead Are My People (Next Door at NYTW); Intractable Woman, Oh My Sweet Land (The Play Company); queens, The Who & The What (LCT3); Today Is My Birthday, Ultimate Beauty Bible (Page 73). Regional: Yerma (Huntington); A ThousandSplendid Suns (Old Globe/ACT/Theatre Calgary); Salomé (Shakespeare Theatre Company). Television/film: “High Fidelity,” “High Maintenance,” “The Looming Tower,” The Volunteers, May in the Summer. Lincoln Center Theater’s 2019 Emerging Artist Award.
Bruce McKenzie
Asher
Bruce McKenzie Broadway: The Farnsworth Invention. Selected Off-Broadway: 10 Out Of 12 (Soho Rep); Big Love, Glory of the World (BAM Harvey), A Streetcar Named Desire (New York Theatre Workshop). Also: Weisses Rauschen, a solo performance at Ruhrfestspiele Recklingshausen and Theatre Freiburg. He has released ten albums in five countries and toured Europe and Japan with the band Maquiladora.
Ana Nogueira
Winn
Ana Nogueira NY Theater: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (The New Group), Mala Hierba and Engagements (both at Second Stage), I’m Pretty F*cked Up (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks), Bump (EST), Knives and Other Sharp Objects (The Public/LAByrinth) TV: Hightown, The Vampire Diaries, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods. Writing: Which Way to the Stage (world premiere at MCC 2022), Empathitrax (Colt Coeur).
Susannah Perkins
Teresa
Susannah Perkins (they/them) Previous Clubbed Thumb credits: Travel, Turn Step; Every Angel Is Brutal. Broadway: Network. Off-Broadway: Judgment Day (Park Avenue Armory), The Low Road (The Public), The Wolves (Lincoln Center/The Playwrights Realm), The Rape Of The Sabine Women (The Playwrights Realm). Regional: Night Of The Iguana (A.R.T.). TV: "The Politician" (Netflix), "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" (Amazon). Film: Lapsis (SXSW), Snakeeater, Enclosure. BFA: NYU Tisch. Obie and Drama Desk awards.
Naren Weiss
Rohit
Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24).
Liza Birkenmeier (she/her) recent work includes F*ck7thGrade with Jill Sobule (Wild Project), Islander with Katie Brook (HERE), Honestly Sincere (Theater in Quarantine), Please Welcome Our Guest with Trish Harnetiaux (MTC Snapshot Series), and Dr. Ride's American Beach House (Ars Nova.) Liza is a New Georges Affiliated Artist and a Macdowell and Yaddo Fellow. She is an alum of Play Group, Playwrights Realm, and The Public’s EWG, and was the 2019 Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Ars Nova.
Tara Ahmadinejad is a director and co-founder of the live arts collective Piehole. Most recently, she directed Grief Hotel by Liza Birkenmeier (Obie Award, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks), Mourning // Morning by Gelsey Bell (Prototype Festival, HERE Arts Center, NY Times Critic's Pick) and Lunch Bunch by Sarah Einspanier (PlayCo, Clubbed Thumb, NY Times Critic's Pick). With Piehole, she has directed and co-authored boundary-pushing live art for theaters, galleries, and digital spaces, including collaborations with the LA-based Tender Claws in AR and VR: Tendar (Sundance 2018) and The Under Presents (Oculus, Sundance 2019, Emmy Finalist). Piehole’s recent work includes Christmas Mountain, a media installation at WNYC's The Greene Space, and Disclaimer (Drama League Award Nominee, NYC Women’s Fund), written/performed by Ahmadinejad, which premiered at The Public's Under the Radar 2021. Other recent directing includes digital collaborations with Satoko Ichihara (Japan Society), Eliza Bent (New Georges), Rinne Groff (Clubbed Thumb), and Scarlett Kim (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Resident Futurist at Pig Iron; NYTW Usual Suspect; New Georges Affiliated Artist; MFA Columbia University.
dots is an Obie Award-winning multi-disciplinary design collective creating environments for theater, film, commercials, and immersive experiences. Hailing from Colombia, South Africa, and Japan, we are Santiago Orjuela-Laverde, Andrew Moerdyk, and Kimie Nishikawa. As collaborators, we believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Recent credits: An Enemy of The People (Broadway), Appropriate (2nd Stage), The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (Broadway : James Earl Jones Theater, BAM), Dark Disabled Stories (The Public Theater), Public Obscenities (Soho Rep, NAATCO, Drama Desk nomination), Kate Berlant is KATE (Connelly Theater), You Will Get Sick (Roundabout Theater, Lucille Lortel nomination).
Mel Ng is a queer artist, poet, tarot reader, costume designer, horse girl. melissaavang.com
Masha Tsimring is a NYC based designer for live performance. Previously with Clubbed Thumb: The Woman’s Party, Joy of Painting (Winterworks 2022). Recently: Terce (Prototype Festival), Eternal Life, Part 1 (The Wilma); Sad Boys in Harpy Land (Playwrights Horizons, Abrons Art Center); The Appointment (Lightning Rod Special); morning/mourning (Prototype/HERE);She is a proud member of USA829. More info at www.mashald.com.
Jordan McCree is an artist based in Philadelphia. Their most recent collaborations include: Sandblasted (Theatre Horizon), The World Takes (short film), Eternal Life Part 1 (2023 WP, The Wilma Theater), Empathitrax (Philadelphia Theatre Company), The Karamazovs (feature film), Fat Ham (2021 WP, The Wilma Theater). In 2022, they were one of the grant recipients to the 1/52 Project.
Allison Raynes Recent NYC credits: The Actors Studio Drama School Repertory Season 2023 (PSM); Bodies They Ritual (Clubbed Thumb), Bruise & Thorn (Pipeline Theatre), The Antelope Party, Intelligence (Dutch Kills); 17 Minutes (The Barrow Group). Edinburgh Fringe: Intelligence (2022), Solitary (2019), Trump Lear (2018-2019), The Providence of Neighboring Bodies (2018), The Sister (2016).
Clubbed Thumb commissions, develops and produces funny, strange and provocative new plays by living American writers. Clubbed Thumb is a groundbreaker, with a precise curatorial vision and a remarkable track record for launching artists’ careers; and an incubator, nurturing plays, collaborations, and above all artists, through thoughtfully deployed resources, opportunities, mentorship and hospitality. Since its founding in 1996, Clubbed Thumb has produced over 100 new plays, and has commissioned and/or developed hundreds more.
Grief Hotel originally premiered as part of Clubbed Thumb's 2023 Summerworks festival of new plays. Highlights from the previous 26 festivals include the NYC premieres of Gina Gionfriddo, Jordan Harrison, Lisa D'Amour, and Sarah Ruhl; professional debuts of Jaclyn Backhaus, Will Arbery, Clare Barron, Rinne Groff, and Susan Soon He Stanton, and premieres by Anne Washburn, Jenny Schwartz, Ethan Lipton, Sheila Callaghan, Tanya Saracho, and Heidi Schreck. Many of these artists continue to make Clubbed Thumb an artistic home.
Clubbed Thumb made its Broadway debut and earned a Tony Award nomination in 2019 with Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, the most produced play of this season which premiered at the 2017 Summerworks festival, in partnership with True Love Productions. Clubbed Thumb’s second anthology, Unusual Stories, Unusually Told, was published in 2021 by Methuen Drama / Bloomsbury.
For more information, visit clubbedthumb.org
Since 1992, New Georges has advocated for an intergenerational ecosystem of exuberant theatrical minds, furthering fierce new works along with long-term wellbeing, expanding aesthetic boundaries and gender equity in tandem. A New Georges project has wit (in the classical sense), is funny (in any sense), is idiosyncratic, often impossible, maybe messy. Collaboration-centered development programs include our workspace, The Room, founded in 1994. They serve New Georges' affiliated artists, the largest ongoing working community of women+ theater artists in New York City. A pivotal home and launchpad for now two generations of artists, our impact reaches every corner of the culture. www.newgeorges.org