J. D. Newman collected five youth plays, written by commissioned playwrights and performed by youth performers Utah Valley University, and presented them in a volume titled Noorda Theatre Youth Plays, published by Leicester Bay Theatricals and available on Amazon. The collection includes two of Newman’s own plays, Gathering Grimm and Superpowers, as well as The Hornswoggle Jig by Wendy Folsom, The Trojan Children by Mahonri Stewart, and Time Mirrors by Drew Chappell. The plays are written to engage 15 to 20 young people in meaningful roles in stories brainstormed and shaped by the youth themselves in collaboration with the adult playwrights. The scripts can be segmented into three to five subplots so that by working with multiple assistant directors, all cast members can be actively rehearsing their scenes simultaneously. Scripts can be licensed for performance through Leicester Bay Theatricals. The anthology depicts the collaborative writing process, the engaged rehearsal process, and the evolution of the plays. In addition to offer five excellent ensemble plays for young actors, the anthology offers teachers and youth theatre directors a model for developing similar plays with their own ensembles.

Writing as John Dilworth Newman, the author/playwright co-wrote an anthology of plays by Sandra Fenichel Asher with Judy Matetzschk-Campbell, entitled Tell Your Story: The Plays and Playwriting of Sandra Fenichel Asher. The text depicts Asher’s development as a writer, as a child creating her own productions with her friends, as a university student performing on a showboat, and as a playwright in residence in schools and youth theatres. Newman developed and premiered four of Asher’s plays (ARK 5, We Will Remember, In the Garden of the Selfish Giant, and Everything Is Not Enough) while he taught and directed at Highland High School in Salt Lake City. The anthology includes six of Asher’s plays: A Woman Called Truth, Once in the Time of Trolls, In the Garden of the Selfish Giant, Everything Is Not Enough, Too Many Frogs, and Family Matters. The anthology celebrates Asher’s canon of plays, her collaborations with schools and theatres, and her support of new playwrights in the field. The anthology, which incudes a foreword by Bonderman Symposium Founding Director Dorothy Webb, is available through the Dramatic Publishing Company.

Several of Newman’s own plays have been anthologized in collections created by Leicester Bay Theatricals, edited by C. Michael Perry, and available on Amazon. Five Selected Plays by J. D. Newman includes four verse dramas including Awakening Galatea, Crowns and Commoners, Liberation, and Olympus on the Moon, as well as the prose drama, Puzzles that was developed and featured at the 2001 Bonderman Symposium in Indianapolis. Four Plays for Teen Actors and Audiences by J. D. Newman includes three of Newman’s other verse dramas: DeGruchy’s Mantle, The Gypsy Tree, and The Yearning Season, as well as a prose adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s second Oz book The Land of Oz. Since these anthologies do not provide contextual information, this site will include blog posts about these plays and about Newman’s approach to writing plays in verse in the 20th and 21st centuries.