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Far From the Spotlight, a Brewing Fight Over Theatrical Rights
Craig
Lucas wasn’t trying to stir up controversy.
When Mr. Lucas agreed to make the Off Broadway premiere of his play “Prayer
for My Enemy” part of the Roundabout
Theater Company’s 2008-9 season, he said he didn’t realize that the
Roundabout’s standard contract would require him to sign over 40 percent of his
subsequent author royalties for the play for 10 years. (In other words, if Mr.
Lucas were to collect, say, $50,000 from “Prayer” over the next decade — a
respectable sum for a well-received new play — the Roundabout would receive
$20,000 of it.)
A veteran playwright, Mr. Lucas (“Prelude to a Kiss”) said he knew that
nearly all nonprofit theaters exacted a percentage of an author’s future
earnings from a new play — known as subsidiary rights — in return for producing
its premiere. What startled him was the 40 percent, standard for commercial
productions but a figure he considered “far too high” for a nonprofit. So last
March Mr. Lucas took the rare step of moving “Prayer” to Playwrights
Horizons (for only 10 percent of its future earnings), where it will open on
Dec. 9. In doing so, he rekindled a long-simmering debate in the small,
interdependent world of American playwrights and nonprofit theaters: do
nonprofits deserve a sizable cut of an author’s future royalties for producing a
play?
“A dialogue is going on right now,” said John Breglio, a commercial producer
and lawyer who has advised New York nonprofit theaters since 1971. “The authors
say: ‘Look, you’re tax-exempt, you’re supposed to be serving the playwright. If
we’re successful, it’s not appropriate for you to be reaching into the
playwright’s pocket.’ ”
“But that argument goes too far,” he continued. “There’s nothing in the law
that says that when a nonprofit creates something of value, it can’t get a
return. And in many cases, if it wasn’t for the nonprofit raising an enormous
amount of money, attracting the best people, and bringing in major producers and
critics to see it, the play would not have achieved the success it did.”
Many nonprofit theaters argue that they deserve a cut because they increase
the value of a new play with a first-rate New York production. To many
playwrights, however, including Richard Nelson, author of “Goodnight Children
Everywhere,” that argument is too one-sided.
“There is no question a good production will enhance the value of my play,”
he said. “But if that play is successful, it has also enhanced that theater’s
ability to raise money for future productions.”
The debate over subsidiary rights has intensified in the past decade, as an
increasing number of regional and local theaters, festivals and even workshops
have begun demanding a slice of the subsidiary-rights pie.
“Let’s say a young playwright gets his work premiered at Podunk Holler Rep,”
said the agent Peter Franklin, whose client roster includes Mr. Lucas, Edward
Albee and Paula
Vogel. “They give him a standard contract, nonnegotiable — and they take 2.5
percent. Then the play goes on to Mid-City Rep in a major city. So we have to
peel off another 5 percent for them. Then the play makes it to New York
Institutional Rep and they want an even bigger chunk” — usually between 10 and
40 percent.
Playwrights are especially concerned that top asking rates at some of New
York’s prestigious nonprofits, not only the Roundabout but also Manhattan
Theater Club, have climbed to 40 percent, the rate commanded by commercial
productions.
“Nonprofits have looked to the commercial theater and said, ‘If they get 40
percent, why shouldn’t we?’ ” Mr. Nelson said. “But the mission of a nonprofit
theater is in part to produce new work. That is what it does — it’s not doing
something extraordinary. And it is on the basis of that mission that the theater
raises money from donors.”
Mr. Nelson drew attention to the subsidiary-rights issue last year in a
much-talked-about speech at a conference sponsored by the Off Broadway Alliance
of Resident Theaters/New York. When a copy of the speech reached Michael
Ritchie, artistic director of Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, which
includes the Mark Taper Forum, Mr. Ritchie decided to act.
“We did an assessment of what the total revenue from subsidiary rights meant
to our operating budget, and of what — if the playwrights were getting that
money directly — it would mean to them,” Mr. Ritchie said. After reviewing that
study, Center Theater Group announced that it would join Lincoln
Center Theater as the country’s second major nonprofit theater to take no
subsidiary theatrical rights from authors. (Center Theater Group does retain a
percentage of the playwright’s movie rights.)
The announcement was heartening to John
Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America. Over the past year
Mr. Weidman and the guild have initiated a series of conversations with artistic
directors of nonprofit theaters about reducing or eliminating their reliance on
subsidiary rights. His central theme: amounts that are a tiny fraction of a
nonprofit’s budget can pay a struggling playwright’s rent.
The young playwright Sarah Ruhl (“The Clean House,” “Eurydice”) sees
subsidiary rights as one factor driving emerging playwrights to Hollywood. “If
you’re talking about the difference between $18,000 a year or $30,000 a year,
that’s the difference between being able to support yourself by playwriting — or
not,” Ms. Ruhl said. “A nonprofit theater could raise that $12,000 from a
corporation or a donor. A playwright typically doesn’t have that luxury.”
Although the majority of plays generate scant revenue from subsidiary rights,
Mr. Breglio said, nonprofit theaters are concerned about “protecting themselves
if they have a hit” on the scale of “A Chorus Line” or “Rent.”
Mr. Weidman, for one, is skeptical of the “Chorus Line” argument. He notes
that nonprofit theaters are already protected by a separate contractual clause
that guarantees them a portion of the profits if their shows transfer to
commercial theaters. He worries more about protecting emerging playwrights.
“There are more stage-worthy plays than there are stages, so playwrights are
very vulnerable,” Mr. Weidman said. “They’ll say, ‘I’d rather see my play
produced and give away 40 percent of it than not see my play produced at
all.’ ”
Lynn Nottage was one such writer. She was thrilled when the Roundabout
produced her play “Intimate Apparel” to acclaim and awards in 2004; it became
the most produced new play in the country for a few years.
“I thought that given the play’s popularity, I’d be able to live off it for a
year or two,” Ms. Nottage said. But by the time the play reached New York, she
had relinquished all but “about 30 percent” of her own royalties. At the time,
she had to take other work to make ends meet.
Ms. Nottage said that she believed that the Roundabout’s production “brought
people into the theater to see the play.” Yet to her a high-caliber New York
premiere is only one part of the equation.
“I got exposure, but a lot of plays get that same exposure, and they haven’t
made the same journey that ‘Intimate Apparel’ has,” she said. “At the end of the
day, it has to have something to do with the piece
itself.”