Dr. John Newman is an associate professor and chair of the theatre department at Utah Valley University. He taught and directed theatre at Highland High School in Salt Lake City for 18 years, where he developed and premiered a dozen new plays by playwrights including Sandra Fenichel Asher, Moses Goldberg, Doug Cooney and others. Dr. Newman has adapted novels by Newbery medalists Paul Fleischman, Richard Peck, Jean Lee Latham, and Avi. He is co-author of Tell Your Story: The Plays and Playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher and author of Playwriting in Schools: Dramatic Navigation. In addition to YouthPLAYS, he has published scripts with Dramatic Publishing, Eldridge Plays, and Leicester Bay Theatricals. Dr. Newman facilitates the Playwrights In Our Schools Project for the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. He received The John C. Barner Award from AATE and was the first recipient of the Children's Theatre Foundation of America's Reba R. Robertson Award.
