How Are We To Pay Playwrights? (Or For That Matter, Anybody)?

I was looking at the New Play Data i posted over here again and i was just thinking about compensation issues and... well.. how across-the-board, our compensation model is totally nuts. We've already talked about the difficulties for actors and directors who want to make a living, but let's hone in on a few statistics from that earlier post:

-- Roughly 3% of income is from royalties 
-- Playwright system of remuneration i.e. the royalty mechanism does not work
-- Commissions? Playwrights consider them a mixed bag. Why?
-- Avg. commission amount = $3-4K
-- Takes 6 months-2 years to write a play (if you took one year to write a play at $4K, you'd be                       making  $333.33 off writing that play)
-- Theater gets to hold onto it for up to several years even if they don't produce it, keeping                              playwright from making additional $$$ off of it.

When you put it that way... how are writers supposed to earn money anyway?  The two big things that we're told are going to be their sources of income (commissions and royalties) are in fact a very, very small percentage of their earnings.  

It seems to me that over the past few decades we've built an American Theater system that supplies steady and reliable income and benefits to administrators while making it increasingly difficult for artists to make a living from their work, leading to a kind of crazy-quilt existence as artists try to make ends meet.

I am not interested in starting an admin-artist civil war. I think the antagonism between those two camps is in general a bad thing, and it's worth noting that the vast majority of theater staff employees could make more money using their same skills in another industry, so it's not like they're in general making out like bandits. The ADs whose salaries we were talking about in the theatrosphere last year are the exceptions, not the rule.

But still, it's worth looking at this system of compensation, and seeing where and how it could be improved.

Comments

[99]

The scary part, as the folks at Playscripts would attest, is that playwrights haven't received much of a raise in about fifty years. That's a good place to start the conversation.

[Mark]

To clarify 99 above, he's referring to this article:

http://www.playscripts.com/raisethewage/

Amateur royalties had been depressed at $50/performance for 40 years; however in the three years since that essay was written, we've seen an increase across almost all play publishers to $75/performance! The article is a must-read.

[pmull]

Seems to go back to the problem of non-profit theater operating on a commercial model that you have highlighted before. Dollars valued over process.

[Eric Ziegenhagen]

Not to be glib, but one look at Tyler Perry's balance sheets suggests an alternate model.

[Tony]

What would happen if the amateur royalties flat fee was scrapped in favor of percentage of box-office gross with a guaranteed minimum?

It's kind of silly to make a distinction between professional and amateur productions in licensing if it costs playwrights bread.

[cnw]

Actually, it's hard to be polite about this subject.

When I lived in DC, a managing director I was close to said he ALWAYS wrote the smallest check to the playwright. Electricians -- everyone -- made more.

What other art form goes to a group of people for their core texts and then treats them with such disrespect?

I frankly don't know why any of the playwrights I know (myself included) still write plays.

Maybe theatre will end up like opera -- with a closed canon of classics that people come to see new interpretations of. I'm not sure that this would be a bad thing ...

[Guy Yedwab]

I have a scheme that answers this question on my blog. It's sort of a far-fetched hypothetical answer, but I think it might work... take a look:

http://culturefuture.blogspot.com/2009/06/publicly-traded-patronage.html

[Adam]

I mean, what are other sources of income? I'm trying to figure that out now. Grants? Awards? This is why so many head to TV and Film. You know how much you can get for one TV script?