NNPN Names Gwydion Suilebhan Project Director of the New Play Exchange

The NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK (NNPN), the country's alliance of non-profit theatres that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays, proudly announces that Gwydion Suilebhan has been hired as the Project Director for NNPN's New Play Exchange, the national database of plays and playwrights that NNPN is currently developing. Suilebhan, a DC-based playwright, theater blogger, and arts and technology consultant, replaces Jason Loewith, who conceived the project during his tenure as Executive Director of NNPN and served as the Project Director during its initial phase.

"We are delighted to have Gwydion on board in this capacity," said Nan Barnett, NNPN's current Executive Director. "He was extremely helpful while we were developing the concept of the initiative, and then again while working with our core development committee to identify the priorities for the Exchange. His commitment to the project for the actual creation of the product is ideal."

Gwydion Suilebhan is a communications and technology strategist with more than 15 years of experience consulting for arts and culture organizations, non-profit organizations, and federal government agencies. His clients and partners have included the Dramatists Guild, the Playwrights Center, the Peace Corps, the State Department, the National Academies, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Wildlife Federation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Drug Policy Alliance, Zipcar, the Chronicle of Higher Education, XM Radio, Discovery Communications, Toshiba, and US News & World Report. His work in the digital sector has earned significant industry recognition, including two Webby Awards. His recent speaking engagements include South by Southwest, the Dramatists Guild National Conference, TEDxMichiganAve, and TEDxWDC, and his commentary on the arts and technology appears on HowlRound, Adaptistration, 2am Theatre, The Dramatist, and www.suilebhan.com.

As a playwright, Gwydion is the author of Reals, The Butcher, Hot & Cold, Abstract Nude, The Constellation, Let X, The Faithkiller, Cracked, and The Great Dismal. His work has been commissioned, produced, developed, and read by Centerstage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Forum Theatre, Theater J, Gulfshore Playhouse, Active Cultures, Theater Alliance, Source Theater Festival, and HotCity Theatre, among others. An NNPN alumni playwright and DC's representative for the Dramatists Guild, Suilebhan is also a founding member of The Welders, a DC-based playwrights collective. He has received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in 2009 he was a finalist for Outstanding Emerging Artist at the DC Mayor's Arts Awards. In 2012, he joined the Board of Governors for theatreWashington.

Drawing on NNPN's history of crowd-sourced literary management leading to multiple productions, the New Play Exchange (NPE) is NNPN's newest initiative. The NPE is a national database of plays and playwrights expected to serve a wide variety of theater professionals, revolutionizing the ways in which theatres and playwrights connect with one another. Initially supported by a cornerstone grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, with additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the NPE will enable playwrights to make their work "discoverable" by theatres, and it will also enable theatres to read and evaluate plays and recommend them for other theatres. The NPE is being developed by a core group of consortium partner constituents from NNPN, the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, Chicago Dramatists, and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.

The National New Play Network (NNPN) is the country's alliance of non-profit professional theatres that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays. Since its founding in 1998, NNPN has commissioned eighteen playwrights, provided nearly twenty MFA graduates with paid residencies, and supported over 100 productions nationwide through its innovative Continued Life of New Plays Fund, which creates "Rolling World Premieres" of new plays. Hundreds of artists have gained employment through these efforts all over the country where NNPN Member Theatres are located. NNPN receives substantial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Shubert Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Network is comprised of a group of Core Members, who pioneer and implement collaborative new play strategies, and a growing group of Associate Members, who disseminate the Network's programs and strategies nationwide. Visit www.nnpn.org.

NNPN's Core Member theatres are: Actor's Express Theatre (Atlanta), Actor's Theatre of Charlotte (Charlotte, NC), Borderlands Theater (Tucson), Contemporary American Theater Festival (Shepherdstown, WV), Curious Theatre Company (Denver), Florida Studio Theatre (Sarasota), Fountain Theatre (LA), Horizon Theatre Company (Atlanta), InterAct Theatre Company (Philadelphia), Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas), Magic Theatre (San Francisco), Marin Theatre Company (Mill Valley, CA), Mixed Blood Theatre Company (Minneapolis), New Jersey Repertory Company (Long Branch), New Repertory Theatre (Watertown, MA), New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL), Orlando Shakespeare Theater (Orlando), Performance Network Theatre (Ann Arbor, MI), Phoenix Theatre (Indianapolis), Playwright's Theatre of New Jersey (Madison), Prop Thtr Group (Chicago), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City, IA), Salt Lake Acting Company (Salt Lake City), San Diego REP (San Diego), Southern Rep (New Orleans), Unicorn Theatre (Kansas City, MO), and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Washington, DC).

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