I n the first episode of our newest season of Talkback, host and DG Council Treasurer Christine Toy Johnson is joined by Council President Amanda Green and Vice President Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for some real talk about how writers get paid (or not). The following is an excerpt of part one of their two-part conversation.
Stay tuned for part two in our next issue!
Amanda Green: The Dramatists Guild is so important because it’s the only group that is us, that is theater writers looking out for the welfare and concern of other theater writers. I have worked alongside directors who are shocked to learn that we don’t get a paycheck. Most people don’t realize that writers aren’t paid for their labor.
There’s a saying that as a theatre writer you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. But even that is becoming exponentially harder.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: And yet, every year there’s news about how this is the highest grossing Broadway season in history. And that is not being reflected in the compensation to writers. And probably a lot of people in the field, but definitely not writers.
Amanda Green: Broadway is supposedly the Holy Grail (not true for many writers) but for those for who it is, it is kind of a fallacy that once you get there, you’ll be making big bucks. That has not been the case for a while now. Getting your play or musical produced on Broadway is no longer a guarantee that you will make a living.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: Yeah. Even if you look at something like the Pulitzer Prize, a substantial number of the last several didn’t go to Broadway.
Writers have been divorced from their identity as economic actors, but we actually are the reason why people get jobs. It’s ‘cause we sit down and do our work that a designer has anything to design, a director has anything to direct, an actor has anything to act.
As an artist you’re asked to be grateful that someone’s giving you a chance to basically exploit your work. And at the end of the day, it’s not about being grateful; it’s about remembering that what you’re doing is the thing adding value. Ask yourself what you deserve, because you should be able to sustain your life on the work that you do, like everyone else in the world.
The exploitation of writers is being baked into the business models people are using to raise money. We all know someone who is involved in a show that has made upwards of $50 million in its run and has been paid not even one percent of that.
That’s the point of being able to possess your own copyright. You have the right to establish the terms and value of your work. And people want to tell you, “Wow, that’s too expensive for the field.” But who cares?
In theory that’s the right to owning your own work; you should set the terms and value of it. People may not want to buy it, but that’s your work, you decide. No one knows how you made it but you. We get to say to our agents and to our producers, “Actually, I don’t accept that contract. There’s no standard here because my work is not standard. I own it, I set the terms of its value, and if you want this work, you have to do this.” It gives you more negotiating power.
If you start thinking about the dollar-for-dollar value of what you’re doing, it’s hideous. And there’s a theater that I’m going to be very kind to not name right now, but I was told I needed to raise money for lav mics for my show.
And I should sell the audio rights to Amazon Audible. And, by the way, that money would not go to me. They said, “Well, you know, the last three playwrights did this.” I called all those playwrights up. I was like, “Excuse me, did you raise x number of dollars for this theater?” And they would be like, “Yeah, I was told that everyone did it.” And I said, “How much did you make on the show?” And it was nowhere near the amount of money they raised. That’s crazy.
Christine Toy Johnson: Do you have any ideas of how we can start doing that, dismantling it, aside from speaking about it, which I think is really the first step?
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: That’s a huge part of it. Because I think there’s a lot of shame. No one likes to admit they were rolled. But you’ve got to let the shame go and go, “I made a bad decision, guys. And I regret it. And in the spirit of no one else making this decision, I’ve got to tell my story.” I think we also have to encourage each other to say no to things. We don’t talk about money, ‘cause it’s the polite thing to do, but it’s time to talk about it, honestly.
You can find all six seasons of Talkback wherever you stream podcasts. Talkback is distributed by the Broadway Podcast Network and supported by the Dramatists Guild Foundation.
