Open Forum

Speaking as a playwright and publisher (but not THAT publisher--LOL), I don't know that I've encountered that situation, but only because people have always licensed the play first and THEN told us that they'd like permission to make cuts/changes. At that point, we tell them to send us a list of proposed changes. So far, wearing my YouthPLAYS publisher hat, I don't think any of our playwrights have rejected the proposals. Personally, I've either said yes or worked with the group to develop a cut/change that I can live with--with a handful of exceptions in 20 years in the case of cuts so fundamental it would no longer be the same play anymore. Sometimes I'll ask for a program note that says the script has been cut or changed with permission, and that certain elements may no longer reflect my original intent.

But if you're telling the publisher up front that you're going to need to make cuts, I can understand where they're coming from: if they say yes and then you submit cuts/changes that the author doesn't wish to allow, then what? If you've ordered your scripts already, you're out that money--since scripts are always non-refundable--and even if you haven't, it's just more paperwork for them. So by asking for the cuts/changes up front, while yes, it does require you to do that work up front, you're going to have to do that work anyway, and this saves everybody from a situation where a license needs to be canceled, refunded, etc.

Cheers,
Jonathan

------------------------------
Jonathan Dorf
Playwright/ Co-founder of YouthPLAYS/ Co-chair of The Alliance Of Los Angeles Playwrights
Los Angeles CA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

That happened to me this year as well.  I requested permission to cut "Property Rites" for competition, and the publisher's rep asked for my cuts before they would grant the rights .  I told her that I was cutting strictly for time and not for content/editing purposes, and that the cuts would not change the plot, theme or tone of the show.  She considered that acceptable and issued me the license for the show without having to see the proposed cutting.

------------------------------
Robert Ellis
Theater I-IV Honors
Performing Arts Department Lead
Cosby High School
Midlothian, VA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Yes. It's been happening a lot more the last couple of years. I received permission without much delay.  Publishers are being much more cautious than in years past.

------------------------------
Roberta Lakavage
Teacher
Tarkington ISD
Cleveland TX
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Hi. LIke Jonathon Dorf, I'm speaking as both a playwright and publisher. As a playwright, a director can change the whole sense of the play by taking out a crucial piece of dialogue. Adding can be just as bad. I once saw a community theater production of a play (I don't remember the name) where a scene was added at the end and an ambiguity left by the writer was explained.    Ouch!

As a publisher, we allow cuts in plays only with the publisher's permission. If we know that cuts might be required for certain plays, that is often mentioned in our description. For example, there is a series of Shakespeare plays that involve a frame story about teens and also audience participation. The participation element works well if performed for a younger audience. If you eliminate those elements, the teen frame story works for higher grades.  

We know that schools have certain difficulties that other theaters might not have. You have specific student groups that you have to find plays for and sometimes your best actors can be male--at other times female. Sometimes, you need to perform a play within specific timeframes.  So we tend to be a bit lenient with allowing cuts for your venues. But we still need to know.  

Your best bet is to query the publisher after you have decided to do the play and before you order the scripts.  So far, we haven't had to disapprove of any alterations that a director has needed to make for time or for casting.  

And thanks for all of your hard work.

Jean

------------------------------
Jean Klein
[Playwright/Founder HaveScripts/BlueMoonPlays]
Virginia Beach VA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Hi everyone,

As always, our first priority is to make sure each work is being performed as the author intended. We support many schools as they prepare for competition season, and work hard to make sure we're representing teachers well when we correspond with the author's representation. To communicate your intentions clearly, we ask for a cutting proposal early in the licensing process.

We've found that teachers consider "cutting" different things depending on their location and each individual competition. While some requests are in "scenes-from" format (meaning you are performing an excerpt from the show without any internal cuts or re-ordering any of the scenes), some include internal cuts (lines or sections removed throughout the script). Again, we ask for this because the agent is not likely to consider a request without knowing exactly what cutting is being requested. We've also found that approval from the author's representation is more likely and quicker with "scenes from" cutting performance.

As a reminder, licensing must be fully executed prior to announcing the show and starting auditions, and any gender changes (even if a female performer is playing a male role as male and vice versa) must also be approved.

I've attached our guides to:

• General Competition Cuttings
• Texas UIL (one of the largest competitions!)
• Thespians 

I hope these will be helpful, and please reach out to K12@samuelfrench.com with any questions!

------------------------------
Rosemary Bucher
Licensing Representative, Educational Theatre
Samuel French
New York NY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2018 08:58
From: Jean Klein
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

Hi. LIke Jonathon Dorf, I'm speaking as both a playwright and publisher. As a playwright, a director can change the whole sense of the play by taking out a crucial piece of dialogue. Adding can be just as bad. I once saw a community theater production of a play (I don't remember the name) where a scene was added at the end and an ambiguity left by the writer was explained.    Ouch!

As a publisher, we allow cuts in plays only with the publisher's permission. If we know that cuts might be required for certain plays, that is often mentioned in our description. For example, there is a series of Shakespeare plays that involve a frame story about teens and also audience participation. The participation element works well if performed for a younger audience. If you eliminate those elements, the teen frame story works for higher grades.

We know that schools have certain difficulties that other theaters might not have. You have specific student groups that you have to find plays for and sometimes your best actors can be male--at other times female. Sometimes, you need to perform a play within specific timeframes.  So we tend to be a bit lenient with allowing cuts for your venues. But we still need to know.

Your best bet is to query the publisher after you have decided to do the play and before you order the scripts.  So far, we haven't had to disapprove of any alterations that a director has needed to make for time or for casting.

And thanks for all of your hard work.

Jean

------------------------------
Jean Klein
[Playwright/Founder HaveScripts/BlueMoonPlays]
Virginia Beach VA

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Dramatic Publishing asked for our cuts for All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten before we were granted rights.  I get it - they don't want to authorize something that will need to be unauthorized if they don't like the cuts.  We had no problem since we were cutting for time and simply eliminating some scenes, but I can imagine that, depending on the show, editing for content might be something that stops them from granting rights.

------------------------------
Laura Steenson
Theatre Director
Reynolds High School
Troutdale OR
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2018 10:55
From: Rosemary Bucher
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

Hi everyone,

As always, our first priority is to make sure each work is being performed as the author intended. We support many schools as they prepare for competition season, and work hard to make sure we're representing teachers well when we correspond with the author's representation. To communicate your intentions clearly, we ask for a cutting proposal early in the licensing process.

We've found that teachers consider "cutting" different things depending on their location and each individual competition. While some requests are in "scenes-from" format (meaning you are performing an excerpt from the show without any internal cuts or re-ordering any of the scenes), some include internal cuts (lines or sections removed throughout the script). Again, we ask for this because the agent is not likely to consider a request without knowing exactly what cutting is being requested. We've also found that approval from the author's representation is more likely and quicker with "scenes from" cutting performance.

As a reminder, licensing must be fully executed prior to announcing the show and starting auditions, and any gender changes (even if a female performer is playing a male role as male and vice versa) must also be approved.

I've attached our guides to:

• General Competition Cuttings
• Texas UIL (one of the largest competitions!)
• Thespians 

I hope these will be helpful, and please reach out to K12@samuelfrench.com with any questions!

------------------------------
Rosemary Bucher
Licensing Representative, Educational Theatre
Samuel French
New York NY

Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2018 08:58
From: Jean Klein
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

Hi. LIke Jonathon Dorf, I'm speaking as both a playwright and publisher. As a playwright, a director can change the whole sense of the play by taking out a crucial piece of dialogue. Adding can be just as bad. I once saw a community theater production of a play (I don't remember the name) where a scene was added at the end and an ambiguity left by the writer was explained.    Ouch!

As a publisher, we allow cuts in plays only with the publisher's permission. If we know that cuts might be required for certain plays, that is often mentioned in our description. For example, there is a series of Shakespeare plays that involve a frame story about teens and also audience participation. The participation element works well if performed for a younger audience. If you eliminate those elements, the teen frame story works for higher grades.

We know that schools have certain difficulties that other theaters might not have. You have specific student groups that you have to find plays for and sometimes your best actors can be male--at other times female. Sometimes, you need to perform a play within specific timeframes.  So we tend to be a bit lenient with allowing cuts for your venues. But we still need to know.

Your best bet is to query the publisher after you have decided to do the play and before you order the scripts.  So far, we haven't had to disapprove of any alterations that a director has needed to make for time or for casting.

And thanks for all of your hard work.

Jean

------------------------------
Jean Klein
[Playwright/Founder HaveScripts/BlueMoonPlays]
Virginia Beach VA

Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2018 10:44
From: Cecille Deason
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Original Message------

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

​Hello,

I have found that it varies by publishers and by titles of the shows.

------------------------------
Crit Fisher
Lighting/Sound Designer
New Albany High School
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2018 20:47
From: Mark A. Zimmerman
Subject: Cutting a play before obtaining license

I have always at least secured the permission to make changes in general before going to the trouble of licensing a play or musical. I do not want to plan on a show without knowing in advance that I can make the changes necessary for performance in my school.

--

Mark A. Zimmerman

Theatre Director,

Akron School for the Arts

Firestone High School

470 Castle Blvd

Akron, Ohio 44313

330-761-3275

FirestoneTheatre.com

Original Message------

I have been participating in one act play festivals and competitions for 20 years.  Friday o received an email from the publisher asking for my cutting before they will decide to grant the license.

Has this happened to anyone else? Did you get permission after submitting the cutting? 

I am concerned about doing the work for that and then being denied.

Any thoughts or comments you have would be appreciated. I am purposely not including the play, author and publisher.

Thanks.

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android