| Do you have to permission to do a play at a school?

Do you have to permission to do a play at a school?

I’m Amber! asked:


I’m a student at college and I just found out that anyone can start a group or a club and my friends and I wanted to try to put on a production of the musical West Side Story. But someone told me yu have to have permission from the writers and producers of the original play but what is the big deal if a little college in a little town puts on a play that no one out side of this town will see? Is it true and who do you need permission from?

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Comments

3 Responses to “Do you have to permission to do a play at a school?”

  1. charlie_bethel on May 27th, 2009 10:33 pm

    Yes, you do need permission. Usually the rights to do any work are given by an agent of the author(s) (e.g. Samuel French, Tams-Whitmark, and other publishers of theatrcal work), and prices vary according to how much you’ll charge per ticket, house size, length of run, that sort of thing. If you decide to go it alone, you probably won’t be caught, but if you are (and this is the age of instant information, remember) the fines can be steep and you won’t have a defense against a civil suit. Musicals are usually a Tams-Whitmark affair, I believe, but in the case of WSS, you should do some surfing to see who handles that particular play. I have known of reps of particular plays showing up at the theater and basically saying, “You don’t have the rights for this work, and you can rehearse it, but you can’t show it until we have your money.” Harsh, but necessary. It is an intellectual property, after all, and not your intellectual property. At least, not until you rent it properly. Sorry if that’s disappointing, but business is business. Break a leg and knock em dead!

  2. dougeebear on May 28th, 2009 11:00 am

    The big deal is that you are presenting someone else’s work for profit. In order to keep from committing intellectual property theft and copyright violations, you must pay a licensing fee to perform this or any other play.

    You know those disclaimers you see all the time on the front of movies: Not for public distribution or performance? Same thing goes with plays. This is also why the recording industry is so hot to shut down file-sharing sites: they can’t make money if you download the music for free. You can’t make money off of someone else’s creative efforts without tossing them some kind of monetary acknowledgment.

    You are free and welcome to write your own plays and musicals and perform them for free. But I guarantee that if some other theater company wanted to use your scripts, you’d want to charge them a fee as well.

    I’ve linked the company that handles the rights to West Side Story.

  3. jimmy on May 31st, 2009 11:14 am

    yes yes it is true!! Like the people before me have said every play that you want to perform unless written by you needs to have the play rights bought!! I remember in one play we did we even had to burn all photocopies of the scripts that we made!!