OnStage Blog: What has become a disturbing trend among high schools, is finding ways to take the cost of theatre productions out of school budgets and pass them on to students and their families.
Whether it's "pay-to-play" policies or just eliminating it from the budget altogether, schools are constantly looking to make theatre productions cheaper or not do them at all.
2 comments:
I completely agree with the idea of lowering licensing costs for educational theatre. As an avid advocate of having a strong arts program in schools for children and teens, I fully support this effort. It's truly horrific that the cost of getting the rights to a show could prevent a school from even putting up a production. I know, at least from personal experience, that the cost of the rights can become very expensive. At my school, we have had to choose shows in our season for this very reason. Also, production costs for a show can get very high, even in high schools. When my school's musical theatre department put up a production of Guys and Dolls, they rented a theatre in North Hollywood that rents a full 7 day week for ten thousand dollars plus labor (required or not) and our opera department spends close to thirty thousand dollars on their spring productions. So if your school is paying close to three thousand dollars just to be able to preform the show, that could eat up most, if not more than the proposed budget.
It is truly terrible that schools should be stopped from putting on a show simply because they can't afford the rights to perform it. Especially when arts are such an integral part of our lives, and students from all backgrounds should be able to participate in some sort of arts program, the fact that low income schools, if they even have a performing arts program, would be limited by money is sad. I know that several times my school has had to rethink what show we were going to put on because of the licensing costs, and though my school itself is not necessarily "low income", the arts department (especially theater) has serious limitations on how much money they can spend. I believe that if a school would like to put on an expensive show, and that they can't afford it, they should be given some sort of financial aid, and not have to resort to either asking the parents (who often themselves are low income), or have to cancel the show.
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