NYTimes.com: Playwrights may deliver the essential ingredient for any theater production — the script — but they are often the only people on the artistic team who go unpaid during casting auditions and rehearsals for their shows, and they usually fend for themselves with health insurance, too. But one major Off Broadway theater company is changing that, aiming to offer a model for compensation after years of national debate about ways to help often struggling playwrights.
2 comments:
There NEEDS to be a better compensation for up and coming playwrights in the theatre. It is frustrating to hear that these play writers are not getting the benefits they need to have a comfortable life style. They spend so much of their time working on their play, casting the production, traveling from place to place and making sure that the actors and people working on the production are doing their play justice. If we do not give our writes the compensation that they need then there are going to be fewer writers writing new plays because they don't feel as if there are financially supported. I feel like the only way that we can put a stop to this is if other professional theatre companies provide these benefits that this theatre is providing.
Speaking ignorantly, what are the unions like out there for playwrights? What are the contracts? I agree that we as an industry who wouldn't have anything to do without the words and intent of our playwrights, and they should be compensated for the contribution and essentially products, just as designers and directors are. The problem though with our industry is ignorance. Unless your like the Eugene Oneil center, who has goals and structures in place to work with new playwrights, most people don't really know much about the parameters and needs of hiring a living playwright and how to navigate that process because there aren't any industry standard to go by, and people don't do any research, and writers aren't going to have the experience to know what they need.
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