New Play Exchange Reaches Major Milestone With 20,000 Plays

National New Play Network, the alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays, announced on Thursday that the New Play Exchange now includes more than 20,000 plays and musicals.

Created by NNPN with the support of the Doris Duke Charitable Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Play Exchange, which debuted in January of 2015, now provides script access to more than 17,000 users in more than 48 countries. Subscriptions begin at $7 annually for individuals.

"It's astounding," says Nan Barnett, Executive Director of National New Play Network, the organization that funds and administers the New Play Exchange. "We knew there was a demand for a cloud-based platform that would allow playwrights to share their work with readers, producers, and organizations, but we never dreamed it would become so popular so quickly and that the new play field would embrace its usage this thoroughly in only three and a half years."

Digital expert and playwright Gwydion Suilebhan originated the concept for what became the New Play Exchange, oversaw the research and development of the platform, and still serves as National New Play Network's Project Director for the tool. NNPN's mission and vision included a mandate to enable communication between theater-makers and theaters, and it regularly creates programs to address field-wide issues such as the perceived failure of the system for submitting scripts to theaters for production consideration.

"The New Play Exchange is a technology upgrade for the new play sector," Suilebhan said. "It's a neutral platform that serves the common good of theater practitioners everywhere, connecting writers and producers in more innovative, transparent, and accessible ways than ever before."

To develop the New Play Exchange, NNPN brought together the artists alumni of its programs, the literary leaders of its member theaters, and staff members from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, and Chicago Dramatists-to provide research and development support. The resulting system has changed how plays are shared, discovered, read, and produced. Its low cost, stability, and ease of use made the New Play Exchange an immediate hit.

The New Play Exchange allows writers to upload and tag scripts with a variety of metadata. Producers can then use those metadata to search for plays and sort their results by genre, length, cast size and breakdown, playwright demographics, subject matter, and age appropriateness. Users can also search for each other and for organizations. The database includes a wealth of information about individual artists and their work, along with ways for users to connect with, learn from, and engage with each other.

NNPN continues to develop and build user-requested features and rolls out upgrades on a bi-annual basis. Recent upgrades include the ability for theaters to share Opportunities with precisely the writers they are looking for in a flexible, efficient way. NNPN has also just announced the addition of higher education subscriptions that provide access to the New Play Exchange to the students, faculty, and staff of colleges and universities.

For more information, or to join as a writer, reader, organization, college or university, please visit www.newplayexchange.org. ABOUT NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK National New Play Network (NNPN) is the country's alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has supported more than 250 productions nationwide through its innovative National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere program, which provides playwright and production support for new works at its Member theaters. Additional programs - its annual National Conference, National Showcase of New Plays, and MFA Playwrights Workshop; the NNPN Annual and Smith Prize commissions; its residencies for playwrights, producers and directors; and the organization's member accessed Collaboration, Festival, and Travel banks and online information sessions - have helped cement the Network's position as a vital force in the new play landscape. NNPN also strives to pioneer, implement, and disseminate ideas and programs that revolutionize the way theaters collaborate to support new plays and playwrights. Its most recent project, the New Play Exchange, is changing the way playwrights share their work and others discover it by providing immediate access to information on more than 17,700 new plays by living writers. NNPN's 32 Core and 83 Associate Members - along with the more than 250 affiliated artists who are its alumni, the thousands of artists and artisans employed annually by its member theaters, and the hundreds of thousands of audience members who see its supported works each year - are creating the new American theater. nnpn.org | newplayexchange.or

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