The American Theatre is in crisis.
The American Theatre is always in crisis.
There is a crisis in the American Theatre.
When one reveals the truth, it can often be difficult to accept. Our industry prefers to live in an illusion that all is well and can continue as usual. Truth is often treated as a shadow—it’s there when someone shines a light, but it’s not fully perceived, so why bother looking?
We ignore the dwindling and aging audiences or the overburdened staff. We puzzle over inadequate marketing or funders who presume their donations confer dominance. We dismiss stories of mistreatment. We defend friends clearly in the wrong because how could they possibly be racist—it was just a joke. We misuse terms like “community engagement.” We treat our theatres like fortresses to protect a “brand” rather than community centers serving the public good. We permit fiefdoms ruled by unchecked leaders. We divert public and private funding to the biggest brands instead of the less-resourced, more impactful organizations that truly need it. We blindly delegate power to boards, allowing them to wield significant influence because of their financial support. We treat EDI consultants like magic wands. We underpay people and demand more. We post land acknowledgments as if that’s all we should or could do. And most egregiously, we treat the playwright, composer, lyricist, or librettist like inconvenient visitors on their own soil, a truth that existed long before the sky began to fall.
Recent conversations about the current state of the American Theatre have evoked a spectrum of emotions within our community: panic, anxiety, excitement, and rage. Panic that more and more theatres or new work development centers will close. Anxiety that opportunities for production and development will dwindle. Excitement for bold ideas that may resonate or save us. Rage against an American government that is not fully invested in safeguarding its arts culture.
Our industry is crying out for salvation, but what does that truly entail? Securing and stabilizing new funding and audiences shouldn't be the only changes we seek. The cotton is high as an elephant’s eye, and writers working in America are exhausted from toiling in the field. They work the land, cultivate the crops, and provide everyone with sustenance, only to be paid the least or not at all.
The American Theatre, especially our non-profit theatres, are plantations in disguise, where those who create the very essence of its being are treated as expendable. It's time to confront this harsh reality, acknowledge the shadows, as systemic change is long overdue. The future of our industry depends on it, and so do the lives and livelihoods of those who have been silenced for far too long.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Theatre writers own their creations and license them for others to use. The concept of copyright, enshrined in the US Constitution in 1787, grants authors the exclusive rights to copy, distribute, and adapt their original, tangible works of expression. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 states, “The Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” As Brent Salter notes in Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951, “Copyright is a market-based mechanism for supporting creativity.” Copyright does not, nor was it ever meant to, address the labor needs of an author. Instead, it empowers authors to manage and control their intellectual property, ensuring they have the final say on how their work is used by others.
While America understands the need for creativity to be injected into the national consciousness, it never created a national funding mechanism nor appropriate labor classes to support its longevity. Theatre writers, not by choice, are independent contractors, and independent contractors have no collective bargaining power. Only employees can start a union, and theatre writers work for no one but themselves.
If you’re not an employee, where generally but not always, the employer owns your work, you have no choice but to be labeled as an independent contractor or you lose ownership over your intellectual property. America has such a dim and limited view on labor, born out of the sins of slavery—first the employer owned the worker to profit from the labor for free, and now the employer owns their labor and pays the worker in exchange for their time. That’s why new legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act or The PRO Act are important to redefining all the ways labor is expressed and acknowledging that independent contractors are an abused labor class with limited rights. (Can we also pass the STAGE Act to fund our theatres and finally get a Secretary of Arts and Culture?!)
So where does that leave the playwright, composer, lyricist, or librettist?
Many times, we as dramatists don’t understand our labor designation. Unlike other theatre professionals—actors, directors, set designers—who have unions negotiating legal protections for them, writers have no such protections; we have suggestions. Suggestions instead of protections do not allow for consistency, and consistency allows for prosperity. Without legal protections, we must translate our suggestions or best practices into contractual language and endure different requests from every theatre on how they do business. This places a heavy burden of advocacy on writers. Every theatre, workshop opportunity, producer, or reading has different contractual asks because there are no universal contractual standards for theatre writers. We, as a collective, cannot enforce anything lest we be accused of restraint of trade or other antitrust violations.
So…
✹ Copyright is recognized as an important tool to encourage creative works.
✹ Theatre writers own their creative works through the power of copyright but they have no collective bargaining power because only employees can form a union.
✹ Employees typically (but not always) assign copyright to the employer.
✹ Theatre writers, to maintain control over their body of intellectual property, have no choice but to be labeled as independent contractors.
✹ Independent contractors have limited labor rights and no ability to collectively bargain.
Hmm…. Do you see where that leaves us? Vulnerable and ripe for exploitation.
We have control over our intellectual property but limited control over our labor, and when you have no control over your labor, you cannot build a sustainable life. If the goal of the regional theatre movement was to build professional theatres outside of New York, provide a home for artists, and allow artists to make a living as artists, then the movement and the non-profit theatre at large has failed dramatists working in America. Theatre writers are grossly underpaid, receiving paltry commissions and meager royalties that fail to honor the immense value of their work and the countless unpaid hours invested in birthing new plays, musicals, operas, or devised work.
The financial divide between what a dramatist earns versus other theatre professionals is heartbreaking when one considers the amount of time and free labor it takes to craft any new stage work. The current non-profit theatre model makes it impossible to make a living writing in the theatre, forcing other sectors like the commercial theatre market, film, television, and higher education to subside writers wanting to work in the American theatre effectively. I do not believe in the myth that a writer is a failure if their income is not derived from their primary vocation. That fallacy perpetuates emotions that force us, as authors, to say yes to bad contracts. When you keep someone ignorant and hungry, getting them to do what you want is effortless. But the income a writer derives from a non-profit production of new work, after years of free labor, is insultingly inadequate.
These facts are not new. Todd London, Ben Penser, and Zannie Girard Voss illuminated the stark reality that the non-profit compensation model was woefully outdated in 2009 through Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play. Why have we yet to make significant strides in how theatre writers are compensated? Why do writers have the same struggles in 2024 as they did in 2009? The answer, I fear, is familiar and predictable. “We can’t afford to. We don’t have the money.” We hear it endlessly; regrettably, I utter it myself.
Securing funding for a non-profit theatre, especially one dedicated to producing new works, feels like a near-impossible task every year. I commend every arts administrator for the tireless emotional and physical labor expended in keeping arts organizations afloat, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. Our theatres and performing arts centers are not pastimes or frivolous flights of fancy; they are essential to the economic and cultural vitality of our local and national communities. Art is not a luxury—it is labor and honest work. Art work IS real work. I extend my heartfelt praise to every Theatremaker, Managing Director, Artistic Director, and the like that persists despite the absence of robust and consistent national arts funding. A mere $200 million allocated to the arts each year on the federal level is a pittance when juxtaposed with the trillions expended on wars since 2001. Yet, the lack of arts funding does not fully explain why writers struggle to make a living.
Non-profit theatres have built a compensation model for theatre writers on the commercial producing model, a decision which is fundamentally flawed. Commercial theatres can generate significant revenue through extended runs, a scalable ticket model, and lucrative secondary markets such as cast recordings and merchandise. Non-profits, however, rely heavily on donations, grants, and government support. In short, non-profit theatres don’t have the means to generate the same level of revenue as commercial productions and are unable to offer writers the same financial rewards that commercial productions can.
Now, wait.
Some of you may think I back myself in a corner here. I haven’t.
“If a non-profit production can’t generate the same level of income that a commercial production can, why should theatre writers expect to be paid the same?” We don’t. The question is, does the non-profit theatre compensate writers fairly at all?
Since theatre writers are not allowed to unionize, compensation is determined by the theatres and producers we negotiate with. We have little control beyond saying no and negotiating each contract individually. This lack of collective bargaining leaves us vulnerable, and the American Theatre has exploited our vulnerability. The regional theatre movement has rewarded art workers with salaried positions and upheld union agreements where possible. However, the writer, who confronts the blank page and takes the greatest risk, is financially marginalized. Paying the dramatist has become the least prioritized financial aspect of running a theatre, yet theatres would not exist without the unpaid labor of dramatists.
The non-profit theatre derived a compensation model from a commercial market that aims for high financial returns, but the non-profit model lacks the revenue base to support those returns. A commercially successful writer may accept less upfront for higher gains during the run and beyond, but commercial producing is inherently high risk, high reward. Non-profit theatres recognize the risk of staging new work by offering lower royalty rates but have never developed a system of eventual financial reward. And then theatres have the audacity to ask the writer for future profit participation (Subsidiary Rights), a practice that has become so normalized that even theatres paying barely $1000 ask for them. So, how does a writer working in the non-profit American Theatre make a living? How do we pay rent and afford basic necessities?
Why does the American Theatre fail to serve its writers?
Why do other sectors of our economy end up fully subsidizing the writers of the American Theatre?
Why is the typical response to a high school student saying, “I want to be a writer,” often, “You won't make any money”?
How is it fair for others to profit from our work, fundraise using our image and intellectual property, while our bank accounts remain empty?
“We don’t have the money.”
No. It’s not that you don’t have the money. We all have normalized exploitation and built theatre centers on the backs of theatre writers. We inherit and uphold systems that above all protect the institution, but the reason we created the institution was to serve the community and to serve working artists.
No one is the enemy here. Not one person. Not one institution. Complacency is the enemy. Terms like “That’s just how it is” or “That’s the best I can do” are the enemy. I know there are no easy answers. I’ve run a national non-profit for three years, and the labor it takes to make any change is massive. Unquantifiably so.
At the recent 2024 Theatre Communications Group Conference in Chicago, I overheard someone say, “Why are writers always yelling at us?”
We’re not yelling at you. We are all exhausted. We have no more energy to yell. You have no idea what it’s like to negotiate with arts administrators in salaried positions telling you how little they are going to pay you. You have no idea what its like to be labeled an independent contractor but not have the ability to set your own rates. We built temples of arts and culture on the dreams and uncompensated efforts of dramatists and use prestige as currency. Prestige is great for a gala but it doesn’t pay a writer’s rent.
“So, what does fair compensation for a writer working in non-profit theatre look like?”
That question is not for me to answer, at least not alone. My hope is that we begin to include the needs of playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists in the ongoing conversations of economic parity. Writers such as Winter Miller and C. Quintana, who are actively advocating for theatre writers to be paid for their time in rehearsal (which does not make us work for hire, by the way), and Ife Olujobi are leading the way to build a better future for dramatists.
But the point is to ask the question. Before you assume that a writer is doing well because they have three new productions in a year, ask them if they can pay their bills. Before you tell a writer, “this is all we can do,” ask them what they need. Don’t assume that a writer produced at a prestigious theatre, or any theatre, is financially well-off. Don’t assume because someone is notable that the money simply flows in. It doesn’t.
The greatest question you can ask a writer is, “What do you need?”
Ask it.
Maybe you won’t like the answer. Maybe it will piss you off. Maybe you can’t fund it and maybe you can. But you should know what a writer needs. Otherwise, you’re no better than “massa.”
Coda
In the 2023 Winter Issue of The Dramatist, I wrote a response on behalf of The Dramatists Guild to an article where the author mentioned they were not compensated for their long-form piece. Reflecting on my initial response, I am disappointed in myself. While I was able to secure funding to provide stipends for writers contributing long-form advocacy articles in the 2023-2024 subscription year, I wish I had done it sooner because my regrettable words are now permanently in print. To all arts leaders who prioritize protecting budgets, institutions, and brands, I want to acknowledge that challenging norms is immensely punishing. Sometimes, we must uphold the status quo to create the opportunity to advocate for change from within. This work is not easy, but change is possible. We try and we fail...and then we try again. But we must always try again. Our writers deserve better. We must not fail them.
