“WE’VE ADDED A FEE” Grrrrrr…..

I am swamped right now but so vexed by this latest bit of what–duplicity? disingenuousness? BS?–that I have to post. My apologies that there won’t even be photos. In return, I’ll keep it short.

Organizers of ten-minute play festivals are using “growth” as an excuse to add a fee. This makes ZERO sense. If you’ve grown, but your coffers haven’t grown, then you haven’t grown. What you really mean is you’re getting more submissions than you can handle, and you need a way to winnow them down, and you’ve decided to do that in a way that punishes the very playwrights who have helped your festival “grow”!

The latest previously free theaters to do this are Kauai Shorts, Driftwood Players and Silver Spring Stage, which are now charging $10, $5, and $10 ($15 if you miss the early bird deadline) respectively. Driftwood and Kauai Shorts’ new fee is particularly egregious because it demands unproduced work (Driftwood even promises to do a search to see if you’re being honest) for which the playwright gets a chance at exactly nothing. (Here’s why I think asking for unproduced ten-minute plays and not compensating them is the worst.)

Silver Spring at least allows produced work and also offers prize money– a grand total of $250 (FYI: informal surveys show that playwrights would rather be paid equally than compete for prize money)! Women in Theatre’s Kauai Shorts also now offers two $100 prizes (and don’t get me started about how they simultaneously want to “support” unpublished playwrights but only believe that published playwrights deserve royalties). But when you’re paying $10 for a slim chance to win $100 or $150, that still doesn’t seem like good math. And worse math is that if you send a play to all three, you’re out $25-$30! For short non-professional play productions that you most likely won’t attend, participate in, or see; without compensation, experience of some kind is the only real value that comes from any production at this level. Playwrights would go broke if all theaters supported us the way Women in Theatre claims to.

Listen, I’m not a fee purist, but there are three times I absolutely will not pay them, and they all apply to ten-minute play festivals:

1) when a theater wants me to pay them for the “privilege” of considering my brand new ten-minute play, but will give me nothing if they decide to produce it (this gets a little trickier with full-lengths because readings and other development opportunity could be worth the risk, depending on the details). Actually, even without a fee, I won’t give away my brand new work for production without compensation.

2)  when the fee is outsized to the opportunity being offered, which applies to nearly all short play opportunities that charge a fee.

3) when the fee is being used as a way to reduce submissions, because that’s either a lie to cover the desire for income, or flat out lazy. There are so many other ways to reduce submissions–geographic limitations, a short submission window, a theme, etc.–but if theaters want to use a fee to do it, they should at least do what’s right and provide playwrights a modest royalty. You can bet these theaters aren’t producing other work in their theaters without paying royalties–and if they are, you don’t want to work with them anyway. Theaters need to start treating royalties for all playwrights like utilities and budget for them.

Edited to add: I’ve been hearing some feedback about how community theaters–the ones mostly likely to charge fees–can’t survive without charging playwrights fees. I have no doubt all this is true and I empathize with any theater’s financial struggles. But as long as every other play in the season is earning a playwright royalties, it’s unfair and unethical in this case to do the exact opposite. I know financial struggles are real and I have never blasted a theater for asking for donated short plays (as long as they don’t want brand new work), but asking them to pay seems wrong. That doesn’t discount the financial issues, but playwrights shouldn’t be asked to solve them. For these theaters, here are some possible alternatives that many theaters in similar circumstances are adopting:

1) Require attendance and volunteer service during the run. This encourages locals, the very people who want to support your theater. You might even eliminate the call for plays, and just solicit and commission. If that is still too costly,

2 ) Move to a DIY festival. If a script is accepted, the playwright pays a participation fee for use of your facilities, talent, etc. This has the added benefit of encouraging more local playwrights, who are likely to want to support your theater.

3) Charge a flat fee and call it a workshop. Then the argument that it’s like an acting class actually makes sense.

If you’re new to playwriting or you’re ever in doubt about what constitutes a good opportunity, use the Dramatists Guild Best Practices guidelines to help you marry what’s best with what works for you. It’s a great resource to help you figure out who’s on the playwright’s side (which can be possible even with a fee) and who’s not.

I lied. Here’s one photo in honor of NETWORK on Broadway:

As promised, this has been a short Playwright Service Announcement. Back to work.

(don’t forget to check out my new website by clicking on the home page!)