NNPN Announces Eight New Board Members
Caro Asercion, Dañel Malán-González, Hannah Wolf, India Nicole Burton, Jessica Bird Beza, Matt Stabile, Peggy McKowen, and Riti Sachdeva join the 2026 NNPN Board of Directors.
Lake Worth Beach, Florida – National New Play Network (NNPN) has announced the addition of eight new members to its Board of Directors.
In July 2019, NNPN changed its governance structure as part of its FY20-25 strategic plan. Now, NNPN's Board of Directors is comprised of 24 carefully cast individuals who represent its 125 Member Theaters, more than 500 Affiliated Artists, and a group of industry-related, field-wide experts and advocates who serve as NNPN's Ambassadors across the country. This leadership body models NNPN’s vision of a robust, equitable, and diverse new-play ecosystem.
Each year, the Nominating Committee, led in this process by NNPN Ambassador Liz Engelman (Executive Director, Tofte Lake Center, Minnesota), and Executive Committee Member Reginald L. Douglas (Artistic Director, Mosaic Theater Company, D.C.), seek applications based on a seven-layered demographic chart that requires NNPN’s Board to include new-play theater-makers and advocates of all races, genders, geographic locations, generations, and positions within the field.
Incoming Board Members include former NNPN Producers-in-Residence India Nicole Burton, now a Chicago-based playwright and arts educator, and Jessica Bird Beza, now the Executive Artistic Director of Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco. Other Affiliated Artists (those who are alumni of NNPN programs) appointed to the Board include playwright and educator Riti Sachdeva and director and arts administrator Hannah Wolf of NNPN Partner Organization Ojai Playwrights Conference. Matt Stabile (Producing Artistic Director of Theatre Lab in Boca Raton) and Caro Asercion (Leader of Artistic Producing at Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco) join the Board as Associate Member Theater representatives. Dañel Malan-González, founder of Milagro in Portland, OR, and Artistic Director Peggy McKowen of the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, are the new Core Member Theater reps.
NNPN's FY26 Board includes those who identify as artistic and management leaders, playwrights, directors, board and audience members, and new play advocates. Fifty percent of this Board identify as people of color, and the majority are female-identifying. The group includes those making work at theaters large and small, in the nation's theater centers and in rural communities, and who range from early career leaders to those who have spent a life in new works. They live between Sarasota and Juneau, creating and supporting new works across the nation.
NNPN expresses special gratitude to those who finished their terms this summer, including Milta Ortiz (Borderlands Theater, Tucson), Maria Patrice Amon (TuYo Theatre, San Diego), Aimée Hayes (The Tent Theater Company, NY), Rudy Ramirez (The VORTEX, Austin), Cynthia White (dramaturg and director, Ashland, OR) and Kim Montelibano Heil (The Old Globe, San Diego) in addition to Engelman and Douglas.
About NNPN
NNPN is an alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. Founded in 1998, NNPN continues to revolutionize the new play landscape through the strength of its member theaters, collaborative efforts, and its nationally recognized programs and services for artists and organizations.
Since its founding, NNPN has provided millions of dollars in funding to its Member Theaters, supported hundreds of productions nationwide through its innovative programming, helped launch and sustain the careers of thousands of artists, and reached hundreds of thousands of audience members around the world with plays that were created and honed with support from NNPN and its diverse consortium of theaters and artists. NNPN’s signature online project, New Play Exchange®, is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers. Learn more about NNPN’s Board of Directors at nnpn.org/people.
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