Broadway Producers Brian Moreland and Rachel Sussman to Join Diana DiMenna's Plate Spinner Productions

Award-winning producer Diana DiMenna is pleased to announce that esteemed colleagues Brian Moreland and Rachel Sussman have joined Plate Spinner Productions, the producing company DiMenna launched in 2018. The new partnership marks a renewed commitment to identifying, developing, nurturing, and producing unique, dynamic stories which challenge artists and audiences to question the status quo and to believe that a fair and equitable world is possible.

"Brian, Rachel, and I have all worked together on previous projects, and I'm a huge admirer of their work and their drive," said DiMenna, Tony-nominated for last season's Pulitzer Prize finalist, What the Constitution Means to Me. "In this crucial moment in our industry, we proudly and boldly commit to bringing new voices and perspectives to audiences, to finding creative new ways to make storytelling powerful and relevant, and to revolutionizing the way our industry operates through our intrapreneurial organizational structure."

Among them, DiMenna, Moreland and Sussman have a diverse slate of projects at various stages of development, including multiple plays and musicals, an episodic TV concept, a virtually-shot feature film, and a growing array of projects in the evolving realm of creative digital storytelling. Moreland (with Ron Simons) and DiMenna will be producing Thoughts of a Colored Man, the acclaimed new play by one of today's boldest voices, Keenan Scott II. Sussman was recently a producer of the star-studded benefit Saturday Night Seder and will commercially produce Shaina Taub's highly-anticipated new musical Suffragist (with Jill Furman). In July, Moreland (alongside producer Arvind Ethan David) produced #WhileWeBreathe: A Night of Creative Protest, a one-night-only online evening of new works that benefited civil rights organizations.

Together under the Plate Spinner Productions umbrella and with an eye toward social justice and art as activism, the trio has several projects in development, including a new film conceived by Alysia Reiner and written and directed by Theresa Rebeck; an untitled podcast with Tony Award-winning actress/activist Celia Keenan-Bolger, and a multimedia project with multi-hyphenate performing artist Diana Oh.

For more information about Plate Spinner Productions and their projects, visit www.platespinnerproductions.com.

BIOS:

Diana DiMenna is an award-winning theater and film producer and philanthropist. Her Broadway credits include What the Constitution Means to Me (Tony nom, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Girl From the North Country, Network, Three Tall Women (Tony nom), Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Tony nom), Bright Star (Tony nom), A Doll's House Part Two (Tony nom), Meteor Shower. National Tour: The Humans. Off-Broadway: Fleabag and Black Light. Her shows in development include Stu for Silverton, Octet, and Thoughts of a Colored Man. Diana's first documentary film, Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan, won the inaugural Chita Rivera Award for Excellence in Dance on Film. She has two other films in development. She is also a producer of the What the Constitution Means to Me film, streaming on Amazon Prime beginning October 16th. She is co-director with her husband of The DiMenna Foundation, a philanthropic fund that supports the arts, education, and the needs of children. Beneficiaries include the Robin Hood Foundation, Harlem Children's Zone and Central Park Conservancy. The DiMennas are founders of the DiMenna Children's History Museum at the New-York Historical Society and the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, home of Orchestra of St. Luke's. DiMenna serves as Chair of the Board of the Baryshnikov Arts Center and on the Board of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Brian Moreland is a creative lead producer for Broadway and beyond. He has a passion for universal stories that bring new narratives into the mainstream form of entertainment. Brian firmly believes in the ability of theatre to foster empathy, and enlighten while entertaining audiences. His Broadway producing credits include The Lifespan of a Fact with Cherry Jones, Daniel Radcliffe and Bobby Cannavalle, Sea Wall/A Life with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge, The Sound Inside with Mary-Louise Parker to name a few. Other notable projects include Charles Randolph-Wright's Cuttin Up starring Blair Underwood, Joe Morton and Tisha Campbell, and While We Breathe. Upcoming projects for Broadway include: American Buffalo with Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss, BLUE with Tony & Emmy winner Leslie Uggams, Emmy winner Lynn Whitfield, directed by Tony winner Phylicia Rashad, and Keenan Scott II's Thoughts of a Colored Man, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III. Originally from California, Brian, currently resides in New York City. He devotes his spare time to the Theatre Development Fund (TDF) and is an active member of The Broadway League's Board of Governors and the Board of Trustees at Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Rachel Sussman is a Tony Award-nominated creative producer committed to cultivating dynamic, inclusive theatrical work through meaningful collaboration. She is a co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, an emerging theatre artist residency program in her native state of Michigan, as well as The Business of Broadway, a new educational venture designed to democratize commercial producing knowledge and develop more transparency between artists and producers. Prior to joining the Plate Spinner Productions team, she worked with such companies as Audible Theater, The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Second Stage Theatre, RKO Stage, and Lincoln Center's American Songbook. Broadway and national tour: co-producer on Heidi Schreck's Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award-nominated play, What the Constitution Means to Me. Other producing credits include the Obie Award-winning production of The Woodsman (New World Stages/ 59E59), Saturday Night Seder (Story Course), Eh Dah? Questions for My Father (Next Door at NYTW), Endlings (NYTW), and The Rug Dealer (Women's Project Pipeline Festival). In development: Suffragist by Shaina Taub, Devotion by Mark Sonnenblick. A past Women's Project Lab Time Warner Foundation Fellow, Rachel was the recipient of the 2019 Geraldine Stutz T. Fellowship in Creative Producing, founded by Hal Prince in conjunction with Columbia University. She is a graduate of the Commercial Theater Institute and a University Honors Scholar alumna of NYU Tisch. www.rachel-sussman.com

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