Find out if your district already has the broad rights to perform those songs. A lot of music is covered by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC which are the three most used performance rights companies in the US. Many school districts purchase licensing with these companies so that all of their choirs and other performing groups can perform the works under their contract with educational purpose. I bet the songs included in this play fall into this, and it is highly likely that you already have the permission to perform these works, and just need to confirm this information. This might include some sort of crediting of the work or other notifications to your audience about the pieces of music and who wrote them and holds the rights, and it might not. Again you have to find that out from your district license, if they have one, for the songs you need. Someone at your district (an arts coordinator maybe if you have one) should have this information and be able to help you. Another resource might be your school or another school's choir director who may have information on these licenses.
No matter what you need to find out who holds the rights to the songs for your performance purposes (probably one of those three companies), what you have to do when you perform the songs to give credit to the proper people/companies, and obtain/verify your license to perform them. Worse case scenario, if your district or school doesn't have a license, these are the companies that you would go to, you would need to find out which ones hold which songs, and you would obtain a license to perform the songs through those companies. Probably not really a high cost at all and these companies will help you and make it easy for you. I hope this helps!
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Kathleen McNulty Mann
mcnulkl@bay.k12.fl.usArnold High School Theatre
Panama City Beach, FL
Program Director and Thespian Sponsor
Florida Association for Theatre Education
Board Member
Membership Committee Chair
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2017 08:40
From: Sarah Haman
Subject: Music, Copyright, & One-Act Plays
First time poster, here!
We are considering performing "That's Not How I Remember It" by Don Zolidis next year. He does a fantastic job of suggesting 1980's songs to correspond with the action in each scene. My question is this...how do we handle copyright if we wanted to include those songs? What about if we wanted to perform the one-act at the state one-act competition? This is the first time I've run across this, as I've not included music with things unless it was a musical, and have only been teaching for a couple of years. I've found such good advice on this forum, I thought I'd ask here!
Thank you!
--
Sarah Haman
Communication/Theatre
Lakeside High School
2871 Malvern Ave.
Hot Springs, AR 71901
(501) 262-1530
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