Well, Neil Simon did not say high schools should not perform his plays but that he didn't write them for high schools. Big difference. He does want them performed as written. There are many NS plays that a school could do: Odd Couple, God's Favorite, Little Me, Plaza Suite, The Star Spangled Girl, and Fools.
But, on my soapbox again, any changes in a play has to be approved by the licensing company. Period. It's in the contract you signed when you paid your royalties.
Keeping the F bomb in doesn't give you the right to change the GD's to damn. It's illegal and unethical. An artist's work should be presented the way the artist intended, as long as that artist has artistic control. I teach my students this and they know that if something is changed it's with permission.
The same goes for royalties. Pay them! The playwright didn't get paid when the play was written, they get paid when it's performed. My students will say "but no one will know". I tell them I will and they will. They know the law and why it's the right thing to do.
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John Perry
Drama Instructor
Atherton High School
Louisville KY
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-20-2015 13:55
From: Jeff Bengford
Subject: Brighton Beach Memoirs
I'd strongly encourage you to explore the works of other playwrights. Perhaps even consider playwrights who write plays with more casting options in them (Mr. Simon's plays are mostly rather small in cast size and very male heavy - if your program is anything like mine, we always have more girls auditioning than we do boys) But here's the real reason why I believe we high school theatre teachers should avoid Mr. Simon's plays: When I spoke with Samuel French re. Neil Simon's RUMORS, (which has several F bombs in it), they gave me the same speech about changes to the text, lawyers and legal action. I explained that I understood all that but we LOVE the play! I implored, isn't there some sort of compromise we can come up with? I explained to the agent that we are a public high school and we just can't say the F word on stage. The Samuel French agent asked me to hold a moment so he could pull up a response from Mr. Simon himself which stated thus: "I never wrote my plays to be performed by high school students." So. There you go. The playwright clearly doesn't want his plays performed by those who are the future of Theatre Arts in the United States. On the other hand, I recently attended a private school performance of RUMORS just out of curiosity - to see how they would deal with the F word. Would they dare to cut it and risk the onslaught of lawyers closing down their production? Would they blast a horn when the forbidden word was spoken? Would they quickly hold up a card or an opportunely placed prop in front of the actor's face just as he says the dreaded word to mask the moment? I was dying of anticipation! But guess what, they didn't do any of those things - they said it! They said all 8 of them! I asked the director after the show how they got away with it? He told me that he spoke with his principal (who doubles as a Catholic priest) before work on the production began and the principal told the director that the F word does not offend nor hurt God - so they could use it. He did, however, ask the director to amend all "G-damns" to simply "damns." Those changes went unnoticed by this viewer and there were no lawyers with nets at the performance.
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Jeff Bengford
Performing Arts Chair & Director
Campbell CA
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