Bitter Gertrude: Once upon a time I worked at a theatre that received two cease-and-desist orders in two seasons– one for copying dialogue from a Disney film word-for-word and performing it without permission, and one for rewriting the lyrics to Godspell. The artistic director of the company told me, “The New Testament is so boring! Stephen Schwartz would have LOVED what we did with it if he had seen it. Ours was SO MUCH BETTER.” She then proceeded to tell me that she had learned her lesson, and asked me to write a commission contract for a playwright that would give her “total artistic control” over what the playwright wrote. “It’s my idea to adapt [name of book she didn't write nor for which she possessed the adaptation rights] into a musical, so I own it.” Instead of writing her contract, I quit.
2 comments:
THe author of the article makes a very good point when they say that a director would be very angry if the playwright walked into rehearsal and re-blocked 3 scenes and changed all the sound cues, then produced it with the director's name on it. I think it's disrespectful to a playwright to blatantly change their work to fit what you want, then claim they're hurting your creative freedom when they protest. It's their work, and they own it. If you think you're better than the playwright, you should be writing your own plays. Collaboration is great, and creating new art is great, but changing someone else's work and breaking legal contracts is against the law and unethical as an artist.
I really enjoyed this article, I think that the relationship between director and playwright is very interesting. The author of this made solid points, and was especially justified in his stance as a director himself. The first of his numbered points was one of the strongest and most significant to me. Here, the author explains that there is a difference between the collaboration of a director and a playwright and a director violating contract by changing the script. This article made me think about the general attitude towards writers in relation to a director. When I think about movies, credit typically seems to be given more to the director than to the screenwriter, at least as far of who the attention is on. With plays I think there may be more of a balance. I'm not really sure if there are implications of this, but I guess it relates to this attitude that the director should get complete creative control and is therefore justified in whatever he choses to take. It's interesting when the playwright is the primary artist who's work is being interpreted in the first place.
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