The stars have aligned and it’s the first day of rehearsal for the world premiere of your shiny new play. Printed below the show logo on your binder beneath “playwright” is your name. You belong here; this all began with you. You reach for the sharpest pencil in a glass jar full of fresh highlighters, pencils, and pens, and take a moment to behold the eager faces around the table as you hear your dialogue read aloud. Here we are, at last! 

At the end of the first week’s rehearsal and a heavy but fulfilling number of revisions, a theatre administrator enters to hand out checks to the whole cast, the director, and stage managers. The needle scratches vinyl as you suddenly realize everyone is getting paid to be in this room except you. The theatre paid you a small commission last year to write the play—with no guarantee of production. You already calculated the number of hours writing against the commission, sadly noting that you’d, in fact, gone into debt, but rationalized that the opportunity to see the fully realized version of your work was still somehow worth it. Your play is going to reach people. You’ll figure it out. The amount the theatre paid you to write the play covered essentials months ago. Now, you are on your own as you begin four to six weeks of the rehearsal and production process—time when you’re not able to work other jobs, time when you’re away from home, but all of your bills from home still need to be paid. 

The reality is most playwrights can’t afford to be playwrights. Which is wild when you consider the whole reason an entire company begins work on a new play is because a playwright wrote a new play! Theatre has never been and maybe never will be a flush industry, so waiting for riches to arrive before compensating playwrights appropriately for their work to shepherd premiere productions is not the answer. There will never be a good time. There will never be a time at all unless we urge one. So, how about now? 

Some may protest that if playwrights can’t afford to be in the rehearsal room, they don’t need to be there. Well, would you drop an infant off at daycare and whisper, “See ya when you can walk, kiddo!”? Probably not. Our theatres assume that because a playwright wants to produce their best work—and therefore be present to make revisions to their script during the rehearsal period—the playwright should volunteer their time to the rehearsal and production process. Why? 

Our goal is to get theatres to stop taking playwrights’ labor for granted. Don’t assume that we have a steady stream of TV money coming in (see WGA Strike 2023), or a wealthy partner or family member, and can work as volunteer interns on our own play. Like every other theatre artist, we can’t afford to work for free. Nor should we be expected to—no matter how grateful we are to have our plays produced. 

Change is possible. However, because playwrights don’t have a union, we must look out for and advocate for one another. It’s especially vital that those among us who have achieved a certain level of success and influence compel theatres to make paying all playwrights for their work in the rehearsal room a priority.

To break it down, here’s what we’re thinking: 

• Write us into the production budget and do not conflate our rehearsal fee with royalties; they are not the same.  After a play opens, playwrights receive royalties from the theatre as payment for producing the play we wrote. Royalties cover the play only; they do not automatically entitle a theatre to the playwright’s attendance in rehearsals. 

• Providing playwrights with a plane ticket and housing, while necessary and appreciated, does not mean we do not have to pay rent or mortgages on the places where we live the rest of the year. 

• A per diem is also not payment. Consider this: If the theatre offers the writer a per diem of $40, that’s only $280 a week and $1,120 for a month. This won’t cover an average month’s rent for a one-bedroom, let alone expenses like food and health insurance. It’s not enough. We have to take leave from our jobs in order to be in the room. Or worse, we are working two (or more) jobs at once and run ragged. 

 A few playwrights alone cannot advocate and act quickly enough to affect the lives of all playwrights. Now here’s where you come in, intrepid playwright. We need you! Help us put together what we’re calling THE GOOD ONES: a list of theatre companies who are rightly paying playwrights for our work in rehearsal rooms. Our goal is to release THE GOOD ONES as an online resource for playwrights going forward and a way to celebrate the theatres who are doing right by their playwrights. 

Have you worked with a Good One? Is your theatre—where you’ve worked as a playwright or in another capacity—a Good One? Write to EnterTheGoodOnes@gmail.com with the following information. (If you ask to remain anonymous, we will not share your name.) 

• Theatre/Company you are nominating. 

• Rating on a scale of 1-5. Five being “Best of the Good Ones”

• When was your production? In the last five years 

• If out of town, the company covered my housing. Y/N

• If out of town, the company covered my travel expenses. Y/N

• If the play was a commission, I received a commission of __________ ($ amount).  

• If the play was not a commission, I received __________ ($ amount) as royalty/stipend for use of my play. 

• The company paid me a per diem. (How much? For how long?) 

• The company paid me for the rehearsal process. (How much? For how long?) 

• The company paid me a percentage of box office receipts. Y/N

• Any notes? Anything else you’d like us to know?

Two things are on the table: No one is coming to save us, and as a collective of writers, we’re only as strong as the most vulnerable among us. If you’re getting a good wage from a theatre, and you suspect others aren’t, let’s band together so all boats lift with the tide. We can lament we aren’t a union, we can shrug and say that’s just the way it has always been, or we can shelf the scarcity mindset theatres are serving and by uniting, change the game for all playwrights.