The Dramatists Guild of America is proud to announce that Todd London has joined its staff as Director of Theatre Relations. This new role was created to foster and establish cooperative relationships between the Guild and theatres across the country. He will also oversee the research and production of “The Count,” an ongoing study by the Dramatists Guild and The Lillys to document and promote gender and racial equity on the nation’s stages.
Guild President Doug Wright says, “Whether at New Dramatists or in the halls of academia, Todd London has built a distinguished career as an advocate for playwrights. We are so very fortunate he has brought his formidable talents to our Guild.”
Todd London also serves as Co-Head of MFA Playwriting (with Lucy Thurber) at the New School. He was most recently Executive Director of the University of Washington's School of Drama, where he held the newly established Floyd U. Jones Family Endowed Chair in Drama. Previously he served eighteen seasons as Artistic Director of New York's New Dramatists, the nation's oldest center for the support and development of playwrights, where he worked closely with more than a hundred and fifty of America’s leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. An essayist, novelist, arts journalist, and theatre historian, Todd has written, edited, or contributed to more than twenty books. He is the author (with Ben Pesner) of Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (Theatre Development Fund); The Artistic Home (TCG); 15 Actors, 20 Years (Dutch Kills Press); and The World’s Room, a novel (Steerforth Press), as well as editor of An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions for a New American Art (TCG), among others. “A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights,” his column of tributes to contemporary playwrights, appears on howlround.com.
In 2009 Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theatre field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” A former managing editor of American Theatre, he has won the prestigious George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his essays and a Milestone Award for his novel. Under his leadership, New Dramatists received a special Tony® Honor and the Obie’s Ross Wetzsteon Award. In 2014, he was given a special award, created for him, by the Council of the Dramatists Guild. That same summer, he was named "Miss Lilly" at the Lilly Awards, honoring the contributions of women theatre artists.
A frequent speaker at conferences and artistic gatherings across the U.S. and around the world, Todd's essays and articles have been translated for publication in Russia, North and South Africa, Scandinavia, Serbia, and Romania. He has taught at UW, Harvard, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and, from 2006-14, at the Yale School of Drama. He is married to playwright Karen Hartman and has two sons, Guthrie and Grisha.