Happy new year, all!
But as we begin the year, a note:
Last semester I was at a Thespian festival and a teacher I like quite a bit told me, in passing, that he hadn’t paid royalties on a one-act of mine. At the same festival a teacher complained about the $45.00 that Playscripts charges for one performance of a one act. In both cases, the rationale was the same: no admission had been/ or was being charged.
So: a gentle reminder. A high school playwrights’ business model has nothing to with box office receipts. You’re not paying for the chance to make money; you’re paying in order to give cast and crew material to work on for at least a month. It seems to me we’re in sort of a Golden Age of high school one acts, but that’s only possible because playwrights can make money by writing them. If you don’t pay your royalties, we’ll lurch back to the days when you first taught, the age when you stared glumly at your copy of Aria de Capo and decided instead to produce the timeless If Men Played Cards as Women Do.