“Rachel Sussman - 'the eternal connector of all good people'..." - The New York Times
Photo by Laurie Tennent
RACHEL SUSSMAN is a Tony Award-nominated creative producer committed to cultivating dynamic, inclusive theatrical work through collaboration.
Rachel is a co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, an emerging theatre artist residency program in her native state of Michigan as well as The Indigo Theatre Project, a theatre company of passion and purpose dedicated to producing play readings that benefit related non-profit organizations.
From 2015-2018, she served as the Producing Artistic Director for the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), where she had the opportunity to develop a new initiative focused on arts-based civic engagement that commissioned new musical works by artists including Diana Oh, Aya Aziz, Ty Defoe and Tidtaya Sinutoke, and Ryan Scott Oliver. Rachel has also worked with such companies as Audible Theater, Second Stage Theatre, 321 Theatrical Management, RKO Stage, Goodspeed Musicals' Mercer Colony, The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Lincoln Center's American Songbook, and CREATE-Ireland in Dublin, Ireland. 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), Love in Hate Nation (Two River Theater), Endlings (NYTW), The Rug Dealer (Women's Project Pipeline Festival), The Sweetest Life (New Victory LabWorks), and Talk to me about Shame (FringeNYC, Overall Excellence Award). In development: Suffragist by Shaina Taub, Devotion by Mark Sonnenblick.
With a passion for creating space at the intersection of theatre and social justice, she has produced and participated in theatrical events supporting organizations such as Donor Direct Action, The Global Poverty Project, Covenant House International, TDF Open Doors, Safe Horizon, The Actors Fund's Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, She Should Run, Everytown, the ACLU/NYCLU, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Victims Fund and Shine MSD, March For Our Lives, and recently the CDC Foundation's Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund. She is a proud member of the Covenant House Sleep Out: Stage and Screen Executive Committee, a Broadway Ambassador for the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and sits on the Board for WP Theater.
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 (Fred Vogel Scholarship) and a University Honors Scholar alumna of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Rachel is a co-founder of The MITTEN Lab, an emerging theatre artist residency program in her native state of Michigan as well as The Indigo Theatre Project, a theatre company of passion and purpose dedicated to producing play readings that benefit related non-profit organizations.
From 2015-2018, she served as the Producing Artistic Director for the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), where she had the opportunity to develop a new initiative focused on arts-based civic engagement that commissioned new musical works by artists including Diana Oh, Aya Aziz, Ty Defoe and Tidtaya Sinutoke, and Ryan Scott Oliver. Rachel has also worked with such companies as Audible Theater, Second Stage Theatre, 321 Theatrical Management, RKO Stage, Goodspeed Musicals' Mercer Colony, The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Lincoln Center's American Songbook, and CREATE-Ireland in Dublin, Ireland. 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), Love in Hate Nation (Two River Theater), Endlings (NYTW), The Rug Dealer (Women's Project Pipeline Festival), The Sweetest Life (New Victory LabWorks), and Talk to me about Shame (FringeNYC, Overall Excellence Award). In development: Suffragist by Shaina Taub, Devotion by Mark Sonnenblick.
With a passion for creating space at the intersection of theatre and social justice, she has produced and participated in theatrical events supporting organizations such as Donor Direct Action, The Global Poverty Project, Covenant House International, TDF Open Doors, Safe Horizon, The Actors Fund's Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, She Should Run, Everytown, the ACLU/NYCLU, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Victims Fund and Shine MSD, March For Our Lives, and recently the CDC Foundation's Coronavirus Emergency Response Fund. She is a proud member of the Covenant House Sleep Out: Stage and Screen Executive Committee, a Broadway Ambassador for the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and sits on the Board for WP Theater.
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 (Fred Vogel Scholarship) and a University Honors Scholar alumna of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.