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Speaking of "subsidiary rights revenues," please pardon this digression: 

Dear Isaac,  

When authors self-produce their work in New York or Los Angeles, it is often under the auspices of the Actor’s Equity Association’s “Showcase Code”, which allows Equity Actors to work on certain types of productions without having to be paid union rates, beyond travel reimbursement.

Some months ago, I was asked to provide testimony in a litigation involving the agents for the Broadway classic Man of La Mancha.

 

The musician’s union, AFM Local 802, has some terms in its collectively bargained basic agreement that governs this situation. First, let’s look at their definitions. “Orchestrating”, says their contract, “is defined as the art of scoring the various voices of an already written composition complete in form.

Many individuals abide by the following rule of thumb: a grand rights license is required for use of three or more songs from the same musical; for everything else, a small rights license is sufficient. However, drawing the difference between the two licenses is not so easily done. Sometimes the use of an individual song from a musical may require a grand rights license.

Audiovisual recordings of stage productions have been around for a while, and the laws surrounding them have not changed. Any author for the stage owns reproduction rights to his or her work, meaning that no one can reproduce that work without his or her permission.

Dear Dramatist: 

Some of the basic principles of authorship to remember are: