 was to the drama to skilled and they got on it right away and I will say from you know the the the number one rule is asked but there are going to be times when the author says no for instance Edward Albee will not allow any changes in the way that he has written the play you will see an African-American production of cat on a hot tin roof or streetcar named desire you will not at least up till now and for the foreseeable future see an African-American production of who's afraid of Virginia Wolf do I necessarily agree with that no I don't I think you know if Jesse Norman can play Brune Hilda then you know Halle Berry can play Martha you know but Edward Albee doesn't agree with that and he has some you know he has logical from his point of view reasoning for that but as Ralph has pointed out he owns the play he owns his work you can ask they say no go do you know the birthday party or whatever I want to bring the room into this because I think there is an interesting conversation there are several things that frankly you all can do many of the people here are working at significant professional theaters they're probably less likely to encounter this and I don't want to get into the issue of that this is happening in your theater you know who do you call should you say something I think that's an ethical conversation for LNDA to discuss but I will say that many of you also teach and many of you are aware of work both in colleges community theaters etc in your community in your community and I have heard anecdotally at this point that in many university programs directors are encouraged to play with text and we should say that not every country holds the same position about fidelity to the author's words and intent that America does we get a long conversation about Germany and Regi theater and what that's all about but so there's one thing to teaching the idea about how you might explore texts differently but if the idea that is being taught is that you have the right to alter texts if high school students see their teachers their administration altering texts with no repercussions that is where this comes from and and then to a larger issue that I that that's important and I think we all want to go on to is we've reached a society in flexibility in teaching about different approaches in different countries and I will say I got beat up in in print for writing a piece about the alteration of texts which was totally the American view that the playwright comes first and I heard from people in Canada and people in England who really just said everything I'd said was dumb and stupid and you know I I'm more careful in my remarks now in terms of speaking about America and about copyright law but fundamentally having been raised in the not-for-profit American regional theater I do believe that the playwright is at the center of the work that all of us whether we are artists or in my case an administrator are there to serve that work but it's it's only by learning more about what is going on it's more about communication and I don't want to dominate this but I'll just say very quickly I had a call a few months back from a school newspaper in the town north of Los Angeles that was concerned the student had gotten wind of the fact that they were doing a production of chorus line and as the reporter told me they were cutting songs and altering lyrics and I immediately said oh they've got to be going after dance 10 looks three and I reached out to the teachers and the next thing I knew I had a call from those teachers and the principal and I have to say proceeded to have an hour long discussion which they made clear they were not cutting any songs they were not cutting the words tits and ass though they were hoping based on other productions they had seen which had done it to reduce the number of times the words tits and ass were used in the song and had a very cogent reason for saying look it's going to get an uproarious response if it's five times in the song the song isn't going to be heard no choice but to tell the licensing house about this you've made a cogent argument to me but it's not my place to agree or disagree and I said I'll make you a deal I really think you should call the licensing house and talk to them about it I said I will give you 24 hours and then when I call I hope the answer is going to be you've already talked to them and indeed it was a longer than 24 hours I made the call and in fact they had called the licensing house was waiting on a list of things that they'd hoped to change they had gotten the list yet a couple of hours later I got an email from the licensing house saying it's all addressed so again it goes back to the idea of you won't always get approval I mean frankly making a call about an Edward all be play as a fool's errand but if there are things for creative reasons for legal reasons for educational reasons I use a phrase my parents always told me it never hurts to ask all people can do is say no but I don't ask you don't get the end I mean giant display yes yes yes why not please yes we're now running the microphone back to the back of hi I'm Diane Brewer I teach at the University of Evansville and when you started talking about this question coming up at universities in fact it does come up at universities and I've had a like revelation I guess this year that on one hand I think the way that we need to approach it at universities and it works when we approach it at universities when we say it's kind of simple it's the author's work right period that it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that but there is a flip side to it which I think we sometimes forget when we talk about this issue from the punitive perspective do you know if you do this then this is going to happen you know and and you're going to be prosecuted like that's when people start thinking well you know maybe this case is a little bit different and all of that so so I've tried to approach it from the flip side that it can actually be exciting to have this conversation to bring the playwright who is alive but not in the room into the process and and I've found that when I approach it in that way that the whole attitude changes completely completely like people are actually excited about asking for permission because it's because the attitude is different well exactly because you know if you're if you just go ahead and do what you want to do and don't bring the playwright into the conversation that's theft and so when we hear about it and we rely on whistleblowers a great deal in my job it's already happened when we hear about it that sometimes the production is closing the next day so we have to send that punitive letter we have to say we're going to you know you are in breach of United States copyright law and boom boom boom boom boom and it scares the bejesus out of people sometimes and a lot of times people don't even know that they've done something wrong so this is where the gill has come in and Howard as well in a big way in recent years education is a very important thing because as you say in this world of you know oh well you know I have my son 17 years old you know I downloaded this movie Wonderland because he wanted to see it not Tomorrowland and I looked at it on on his computer and I was like where'd you get that I don't think that's out and plus it had subtitles in Spanish which made me realize he'd found it in some strange place and he kind of gave me a look and he knows that you know both of his dad's work in the theater and that we're concerned with you know copyright and all of that but he needs to be educated and he's the son of the publisher you know I think you're absolutely right that the approaching this from a legalistic you know I'm going to throw you in jail or if you do this kind of thing is not going to work at least not in in isolation we've been talking internally with the anti-piracy committee in the guild about getting offering to schools either in person or Skype conversations with living writers to schools that are considering doing their works to have sort of a workshop with them if they are agreeing not to steal a little sheet music you know and monologues and things like that we're trying to look at more affirmative ways to because I know if I want my daughter or son to do something tell them not to right so we're not telling them not to business in a society which thinks information wants to be free you know no you want the information to be free that's a different issue information is just information so let's we have to acknowledge that there is a penalty for this stuff but we also need to find ways to make the ethics of of how you treat authors to be a more positive experience and I think we've been going around colleges talking to schools talking to groups trying to incorporate into class so you know the syllabus the business of playwriting Howard you as an author want to be treated how should you expect to be treated in this industry and there's not a lot of that going on in schools and playwrights are coming out of these programs without with a real ignorance about who they are in this process we see that as a real hole that needs to be filled the guild is trying to develop a syllabus for that or you know something that could be incorporated into existing teaching programs we've also been going around you maybe where the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival I used to go to all the regional conferences of that and I would walk through the design display rooms I always love to walk through and look at the scenic designs and the costume designs of the kids who are putting their stuff up for competition and there's a description of the work next to the display and they always say the title of the play and when the director or of the play sometimes and the designer talks about how they were trying to serve the director's vision and sometimes there's no you don't know who wrote the play I saw things on assassins you didn't know it was written by Stephen Sondheim and John Reidman but you knew who the student director was so I think that's an that's a window into the mentality of the way this material is being taught if there's no emphasis or no respect for the work of the text how can you expect the kids to have any I mean it's exciting and to feel empowered and to reach out to the living playwrights and stuff but it's also exciting I mean the challenge too is taking the text you're given and making it work and not you know because there is it is kind of a new thing like okay but here's what I think so let me add this you know of getting it in it as written you know and making working within a limitation which is the exciting thing about a play it's like here are the words here's the situation how do I breathe life into it how do I make it work so I think that has to be part too of just and I just want to quickly because it's Amanda speaking here I would be curious how because Amanda is the daughter of Adolf Green I'm assuming you have a lot to say about your dad's works yeah no it's and that's another thing sometimes we're dealing with the living playwright and sometimes you're not sometimes you're dealing with the air to that playwright who is no longer with us and you know in Amanda's case thank god the air is someone who is of the theater who knows about the theater and can make an informed intelligent decision about that sometimes you're going to be dealing with somebody who knows from nothing so I just say that as a yeah no I said my mom is that Phyllis no one who's the head is you know the my dad's state but I definitely deal with it and yeah we do with it all the time too because I love their work and and again you know directors have said like or producer like it's dated and and if they you know there may be some references that are dated but also writers have been brought in and I know my mom had a hard time of like no no no you know like but at least they will bring it to her but some things ended up oh gosh I don't know yes I did in on the 20th century I did make change I did why why because I felt like it no no the director came to me in the in the case of on the 20th century there's a song that my dad and Betty at Comden and Sae Coleman had written called The Legacy and the director came to me for two reasons and asked me to look at the lyric or just reconceive the moment one was the punchlines were all references to things like a cape from floridora my ticket stubs to abes irish woes things that he thought were jokes that would not register with the audience he also felt dramatically that the song uh it was a list of things that the producer was going to leave to his henchmen because he was giving up and he starts the scene with taking taking out a pistol and says I'm going to kill myself there's nothing to live for and here's what I'm going to leave you and the song was a list song and he felt it stopped the dramatic tension of the moment uh he he my mother is the head of the estate so he went to my mom and she said yeah I I agree with you it does stop the dramatic tension the moment and people don't really know if floridora is not going to get laughs and things like that uh so I agreed to reconceive it and look at it and I talked to the director and we all said if we don't think it works that we're not going to do it you know and I so I was very careful about it and I I I decided using the same music and I wrote a new intro for lyrics and I was like no their lyrics are better you know so but we came up with something that we all felt worked but it was definitely a a process with everybody going through it uh gabel green at lahmala uh postal and the lmda this served a couple of days ago with asking uh if anyone had experience with the neural cowardice state around matters of altering of setting or time and uh Amy rose marshal with uh sam french got back to him saying they ripped the estate for amateur productions but that she did have some information on limitations that's how she she phrased the response I was wondering if you could um uh raffer peter maybe I'll talk about the kinds of conversations that I had with states around this um to determine these kind of social these these limitations do they well as I said earlier I I think that there are some some estates are very flexible um some estates are you know you're dealing with one person you know with with adolf green you're dealing with phyllis newman and a man to green um with the estate of tennessee williams that's you know that is represented by the university of the south and they rely I believe a great deal on their agent which is a an agent based in london um and they seem very flexible some estates are not going to be flexible some estates are going the becket estate that's a perfect example becket will not allow any because that was samuel becket's position during his lifetime no changes nothing you you got to have that tree exactly where he says it's going to be you know I don't believe so I mean if there is they may get done but I don't they may not be approved that said there was a Broadway production of god oh not very many years ago in which um it was set largely among almost craggy rocky terrain and people entered through these large boulders and that is not a bare stage and Broadway it's pretty hard to miss I'm speaking of the production with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin at roundabout um no no not the not the older one um you know there's something very interesting that happens and I know there's a question for you guys and that's all add to it which is sometimes people do reimagine something in a very small place where it's not they've not gotten permission it is discovered and sometimes whether it's the author or the estate decide they like it so in a way that complicates this conversation that's what happened with Sondheim um yeah it is a conversation right I mean I'm sorry did you have a question a lot of times it's administrations and Facebook is your friend because every time something gets posted that it happens to one institution you carry it in and others get the message but I also want to tell you and I would be curious to hear what Diane and Jules and the other university faculty in here have to say I have reviewed a lot of textbooks in all these years I cannot remember one textbook that has the section on the playwright that talks about the rights of the playwright and how you don't put a mustache on a painting and and I I urge you to go to the textbook publishers well here's the thing I mean I'm a publisher and what there is and there should be in every textbook and if there's not then that's the problem of the agent or whatever there's a copyright notice and there and if there's a copyright notice it tells you where you need to go to get the rights to that play oh I see what you're saying I'm sorry that's exactly what I was talking about in terms of curricula in universities this focus on on the playwright and is absent but it's absent you'd expect it to be absent in certain areas but in the MFA writing programs themselves they are not and I'm generalizing they are not empowering the playwrights to make to have these expectations in very often they're infantilizing playwrights by saying you know this is a group project it's collaborative everybody's going to work together to fix your play you know it's it's there's there's no um support for the notion that a play is the expression of a unique voice and that the production's purpose is to recognize that voice and and and make it live there's more of a focus on a group process on pedagogy there's there's you know which you would understand in an academic environment but it doesn't necessarily serve the interest of the playwright and therefore not necessarily serving the interest of the American theater well can i jump in and say on the issue with textbooks unless it's something the guild wants to get involved in this is the sort of project that now that i've established the arts integrity program at the new school i can do research on so my my fast comment slash commercial is to say if people want to contact me right now the website for the integrity initiative isn't built but just through contact me through he Sherman dot com tell me the textbooks because i'm not a teacher i'm you know i'm new to this send me the names all of you send me the names of common textbooks that don't or ones that do and then collaboratively with with the guild with others we can we can start to reach out and talk to them we are in the process of developing a text uh for the playwright uh for teaching playwriting uh how to incorporate this other uh beyond craft you know what is it the playwright needs to know uh about their business and we are also all schools are can become subscribers to the guild and you get all of our publications and access to all of our downloadable articles many of which deal with these kind of issues we give free uh membership sometimes to students uh on a one-year basis to get them involved so there's all different ways if you are in an academic institution to become part of the guild in a way where you can make this information available to your students on a regular basis at almost no cost so i encourage you if this is something you're interested in it's out there just contact our office and we can help you i just want to jump in for a sec just to change the conversation a little how it's reminding me about um songs and changing songs the songs are a text as well this i get um in this misbegotten production of hands on a hard body um the director had one the end of one song instead of ending in a button he had to bleed into the next scene so people started talking while the music was was not a good directorial decision but it also alters the song and the way it does it and he uh cut the opening number was happening and also i was like wait it's over what happened to that part he took it out where i consider a very important part of the song this woman singing about to god about how she needs to try you know um you know so those things are uh those are real you know uh things that uh bother song writers and can change the meaning of the musical um and changing the sex of who in the same production you know a woman saying a song who was not instead of this other character uh the sex isn't as important as who the character was um and um you know all even changing keys you know that's but that's something you do have to ask um and uh tempos all those things radically change a song i said you know what a number was changing to the slow slow dirge and then like a song that's very moving was like dum dum dum dum dum you know so all of those all of those things are are important and integral as well interestingly enough i'm talking about songs another area that seems to be coming up more and more recently uh which and perhaps it's just a function of the age in which we live in which you know music is with many people you know 24 7 um playwrights these days my experience as a publisher now and perhaps some of the agents experiences as well with playwrights tend to write it seems with a with a soundtrack in their head so not only do i as the publisher have to think about the play itself very often there will be six or seven copyrighted songs which are included in the work of the playwright now when you're doing your productions and you know the theater that has you know a four-week run or in a college you know a two weekend run nobody's going to find out that you put in you know four Beatles songs or you know a Jerry uh Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly or whatever but when it comes across my desk and it wants to be published the rights to those songs have to be cleared and a lot of playwrights doesn't even occur to them that not only are their rights important but the rights of the composer lyricist this is something we talk to our members about all the time i mean we have a business affairs department members call us and ask us questions can i do this can i do that um and the use of other people's material in their plays is something we are constantly talking to them about and it's basically the golden rule don't do something to somebody else you wouldn't want done to you so if you think you need the rights you probably do you can get up you can get away with things but do you want somebody getting away with your plays with the abuses of your play so we have seminars on this we have a conference coming up in a few weeks in La Jolla and we are having a whole thing on can i do that the answers generally no but but there is something in in copyright law called fair use and this is a case we just got involved with there's a play by um a playwright named David Ajmay who wrote a play called 3C which was a parody of 3's company um taking it uh in a whole new direction and and the uh to say the least and the the owners the the producers of the original sitcom were not happy and basically stopped the production prematurely and um wrote him cease and desist letters and he was going to just put the play away and move on but publishers approached him and it's like well we would actually be interested in publishing this if you can clear up this issue so there was a lawsuit uh the guild the drama's legal funds fund all joined in as well um and he was uh and the court found it to be a fair use it was a transformative use of this material and so uh it wasn't an infringement and so the answer isn't always no sometimes the answer is yes you have a right as a as an artist to make fair use of other people's material and the best thing is as of yesterday it's completely resolved because taffner entertainment has whatever there's there's word of a settlement but there will be no further claim against the show but that playwright has been enjoined from having that show produced it was originally done in july 2012 and he's been prevented from making any money or having any productions from the show since that one production at rattlestick and in uh the summer of 2012 now as of yesterday it is finally 100 but the keyword and ralph used it is transformative parody is one thing there's also as you may have read recently um there the the estate of uh Abbott and Costello has sued about the use of the who's on first routine in hand to god and the other day i was reading because it had not been published i was reading again jessie eisenberg's played the revisionist and i'm get to this point and i thought oh my god he used who's on first now apparently who's on first is in the public domain and from what i understand but it's still an open question but my point is the material if it's if as in a part of in three c that's a parody parody is something that the courts have agreed is is fair use if you take a chunk of long day's journey into night and plunk it into the middle of your play or you know or if you decide that you're going to put mary tyrone and james tyrone in your play which takes place in the suburban you know levittown you're going to have issues with people so it it gets very well there's an interesting sort of conversation there so the dramatist play as you probably know anybody's signed literary contracts to do work and whatnot it's very very clear this is a dramatist contract there may be no deletions alterations or changes of any kind made to the text the title of the play may not be altered so then it's very clear on that level at the same time so you're suggesting that education and you you're suggesting to your suggesting education is one key to try to grow the conversation to let people know that the playwrights work hard that right says another to the the situation with your play that sure you know when i work for film i expect my work to be chopped up packed the words to be changed etc but i get paid as misfortune in theater i get paid nothing so i desperately at least want to make claim to my rights as a as an author right well there's something to that um so this idea of of ownership and being properly remunerated know that absolutely valid excuse me this this david gemmy thing is very interesting because yes they they ruled on the parody issue they they seem to use the word they did use the word parody as a as a validation for the claim but at the same time i find that word transformative very interesting too isn't an art school director really author or not trying to use material uh in a transformative way to bring to light new issues or new ideas about the world around them and not you know again the legal the legalities aside because they're very clear well they're not that clear that's part of the problem and so a language becomes very important transformative is a legal term besides being a word that has its own meaning it has a legal definition and gavel at the end of a trial you know the point is to avoid a trial entirely so transformative use is sort of a legal conclusion um transformative with a small team yeah well yeah i mean every uh every production is transformative of the script of that play but you know that it's a you're transforming something from a written work into a performed work that translation is created by the director in in collaboration with everyone else on the production but that that's not transformative with a capital t i i think and it's not just limited to the theater a few years back and well you guys may know more about this than i but there was a book called the wind done gone which was it took gone with the wind and then it told it from i believe from the point of view of the enslaved people in the book and i believe that the author won the case on that but i still think that it's as you say it's it's a it's something that is in terms of where we are on that issue in the theater and obviously in other uh expressions of the written word it's a it's it's a story that has not come to its conclusion yet in terms of what we know is true and what we know it's not amanda did you bring us in yeah that that was just doing that yeah i i also think that sometimes uh like i i can only use my personal experience like with with hands in a hard body the director had such a different idea of what well first of all he was mistakenly thinking like i'm going to fix the show and i'm gonna do you know which was no one asked him to and um he didn't but um also if your interpretation is so at odds with the play then don't do the play you know i mean like if like this this should be a play about blah blah blah well then find a play about blah you know what i mean like if it's if it's uh if it's so clashing with it i mean also use the text without changing the word and make something you know totally new of it which could be really exciting you know um okay what time do we this is 11 15 right yes i'm really interested in a timeline of for intervention i'm really clear about what happens prior to opening or prior to rehearsal and after the show but i'm wondering what other interventions happen with the all the financial reproduction you know repercussions and if somebody would like to speak to that at least from it happens at any point along the way sometimes we'll get a whistleblower often a disgruntled actor i i don't say that with any judgment but they'll you know contact us anonymously and say so and so has made all these changes and you need to shut them down so that can happen during rehearsal it can happen once a review is seen you know now the internet used to use clipping services in the old days where you would have reviews from the papers all across the country sent to you so you could see what was happening with plays now we see them you know practically in real time when it happens nine times out of ten i will say that our buyer is mortified horrified to find out that they have gotten themselves on the wrong side of the author on the wrong side of drama's play service and we will never do this again sometimes they as in amanda's case they they buck against it in which case we have to say you know what we you know we we can have the the author and sometimes we have to get into it we can take legal steps to enjoy them from producing the play further if they refuse to stop we can also say we're not going to license to your company anymore because we can't trust that you are going to abide by the terms of the contract of which you are well aware um it rarely gets to an extreme point yeah and i would like to just make very clear like the the goal of as a writer and all of us is to have the plays done i mean nothing makes me happier i've seen great productions i've seen not so good productions but i always am the fact that it's being done is wonderful it would take it takes a lot you know i've seen dopey changes and things but they're like little and i'm not going to i'm not going to shut production you know i mean that's not my i don't go to police a production i go because it gives me extreme pleasure to see another production you know and someone else's interpretation and i've seen people and you know a production dallas where i thought my god that guy's better than the guy i bought you know like i never saw the song that way and you know so that it seems like a punitive thing but really that's the last measure and and and we didn't we we even like we weren't like you're closed you know and think which it was the most extreme case i've certainly been involved with they they said okay okay okay we'll put everything back the director said we did it in one night and he lied because they done it um no we didn't we don't always have the they the author doesn't that would all be us but nobody but just to give another example prior to the hands on a hard body and another one that that i'd looked into was uh a production at the oscilo theater in florida of brian frills philadelphia here i come and uh the show was directed intriguingly by a director who is also a playwright frank galotti um and he had eliminated several minor characters he had interpolated musical interludes and he had cut an intermission um i became aware of it when there was a newspaper story in which the artistic director of the theater was defending um that these changes had been made and decrying the fact that mr frill did not come to see the production to see how well they worked um mr frill of course is relatively elderly and doesn't live in this country um so what was interesting was in that case and unfortunately bruce lazarus uh was not able to be with us today um is samuel french made very clear that the show needed to be fixed and because oscilo is a repertory company they were able to suspend performances of that show add additional performances of other shows in rep at the time and make the changes and what i thought was the best reaction was the local critic who had initially given the show a very nice review um and when i spoke with him in looking into it didn't seem to fully understand what the ramifications of this issue were he did go back and review it after the the play had been restored and he literally wrote it makes so much more sense yeah i i interestingly i was very surprised when i found out about this issue with uh brian frill's play at the oscilo because i i represented don delillo as a playwright uh when i was an agent and don wrote a play um called valparaiso which had its premiere at the american repertory theater in boston and frank gawadi wanted to direct it at steppenwolf and he asked for changes which i always described the change the kinds of changes which frank wanted to make in this play as it was akin to if you did a production of streetcar named desire and it started with blanche being led off to the insane asylum that's what frank did with valparaiso he totally redid the structure of the play but he asked permission to do it and don was like okay sure you know don's a great guy it was like you could do it this one time we'll see how it goes and i will say don't tell don i said this i thought it was much more entertaining in chicago than i did in a rg but you know here's the thing it wasn't the play but they asked so i'm surprised frank didn't just like go to brian frill and say can we do this yeah that's the thing asking is is because you never know what you're going to get the water mill theater doing sweeney todd with all the musicians playing the stuff that was a huge hit so you never know what's going to turn into something interesting but everybody's open steven sondheim it's very interesting steven sondheim is willing to permit re orchestrations of his work so long as the text is faithful because certainly the water mill and what john doile has done with several sondheim shows there was a uh prog metal production of sweeney todd in washington dc last summer which was sufficiently successful uh and obviously met with with steve's approval that it is being done again this summer there is an indie band called devochka that's very popular in denver and they are doing uh they are behind a reworking of the musical arrangements and orchestrations of sweeney todd so long as the show is faithful steve seems to be willing to entertain different versions and indeed there was a a production from the chichester festival that went to the west end in which the show was visually reset from its original period into the mid 1930s thank you i said this let's take some questions i know there must be some i want to refer back to what beth and richard wrote in the description for this um this panel uh where do we draw the line and this for you miss green and and you guys for anyone you represent i'm just kind of curious in your mind although i know it's going to be case by case is the line different for people who want to shorten or change aesthetic in some way which is i think the aesthetic issue is to me reprehensible versus the ones who want to be able to do it at that level by omitting you know fucks become facts or whatever i don't know do you do you make a distinction between those two totally absolutely yes yes i mean it really it really takes i've never before thought i've been so uh you know offended by a production because i've seen as i said i've seen all kinds and yes language changes i may see it and even not agree with it but i'm certainly not going to close your production you know i'll just be like ah didn't work for me i of course we always like to be asked for us and i'm and and very amenable really i mean we've had actually for a hands on a hard body of the character of norma is hispanic and someone said we don't have a hispanic woman who we feel is talented enough we have a woman who's the thing we're like no it was a different production a different production we're like great okay great you know i mean so it's it is a living breathing thing it's not with us it's not set in stone it can't be set in there can't be a line because every writer has their own line and every uh situation is different you may there are things you may see no to uh regional theater or school doing that you may say yes to if it's a director you really want to do it who's doing in new york which will add value to your work and you're willing to have that version done on a higher level or vice versa you may not want to change to new york they're willing to let smaller productions do different things they're out of the site of you know the general public so there's no way to say you know what's below you know what's the line is i will say that there's a there's some controversy about what the text is um as far as the guild is concerned everything the writer puts on the page is the text and that includes the stuff in parentheses uh a lot of directors think well we'll scratch all that stuff out and start from scratch as if that wasn't part of the play when when a parenthetical says angrily that's a stage direction that's that is about character motivation that is about character intent that is as important to that character as the line of dialogue they're saying i i i need to interject here and this specifically speaks to what i do because i published the acting editions of the play acting editions have now been published for you know many many many years part of the problem is that sometimes the text that you see in the acting edition from the older versions of the plays may not be what the author himself or herself actually wrote it may actually more reflect the stage manager's version of the script which has stage directions and even things not always and certainly not now because now the author has primacy is in terms of you know looking at the text to make sure that what is published is what he or she wants to be published and that is true but doesn't matter because at the end of the day any changes to that script belong to the author so even if the stage manager made a change it's not for the license so licensee to to determine well this is a stage manager's direction so i can change it and this is the authors so i can't you have to assume it's all the authors and you cannot change it that being said not all stage directions are created equally some are logistic some are about movement or you know where the person is on the stage where how things come in and out some are not integral to the character and the and the and the story some are what a stage manager or even an author visualized in their own head so i think there's a lot more leeway and those kind of things but again not for the licensee to make those determinations on their own necessarily you may if there's doubt you may want to ask i want to give a quick example of a change that comes up a lot when you speak to what's actually the text i'll use the funny example first given the recent trend towards more plays which are a single act they may be a long single act you will find many regional theaters they want to insert intermissions because it cuts into concessions business a playwright has written to play with or without act breaks because they want a certain flow of action and the play can can cease to make sense either by inserting a break because there's no when you restart you're not you're you're in the middle of a flow that was never meant to stop or conversely people who want to remove reduce intermissions three act plays that are now two but we're very clearly structured with the understanding that people were going to have gone away from it for a little bit and suddenly it becomes a different thing so even something as simple as inserting an intermission or removing an intermission can make a big difference i know uh authors who've been furious about music pre curtain music or post curtain music because it affects the mood in the room in a way that they didn't intend so you know from our point of view the the moment you walk into the theater that the theater has opened and allowed an audience in you're now you know seeing the play whether the curtain is open or closed or other actors or on stage or not at that moment and there has to be some deference to the intent of the play is there any other question yes here comes the microphone um two two questions one that i didn't get to ask yesterday when the folks who were doing devised work um came in to talk to us which is a little bit about devising um and the turn to devising and how that's changing the role of the writer and the role of citational practices um versus you know sort of borrowing and plunking i i've known companies who kind of become devised companies um because they are frustrated they feel frustrated about getting to do things with plays i'm not the people who were here yesterday but i'm just saying that as a strategy so it was a way to avoid having to struggle with playwrights and working on that and the second question may be more important for what we're doing here have you experienced situations where dramaturgs can help stop this from happening and becoming problematic right so intervene with the director or negotiate between a director and playwright so that a choice is made that is in respect of the text and is also forwarding what the production is trying to do or having that open conversation about it because that seems sort of what our job is with regard to devise texts uh the guild has has formed a committee to investigate the best way uh to protect playwrights in those environments and to come up with criteria recommendations for our members when they because right now it's sort of the wild west it's all every company is different how they work and basically who owns and controls the text is who profits from it and too often it's the production company you know the the money that put it up to play becomes the owner of the play and then you're entering the hollywood model except without collective bargaining without health insurance without all the other perks of being a screenwriter or a television writer so we're very concerned but we also acknowledge this is a growing field that more and more writers our members want to be involved in this environment so we're not looking to you know uh stop it or inhibit it in any way we're just trying to figure out how it's working and what ways would work best for writers in those environments with regards to uh the roles of dramaturgs um i think the less i say on that the better probably i'm not the right person you know once a devised talking about devised text once a devised text gets to my desk by that point usually uh it has hopefully it has been decided by the company who's going to take the credit and who's going to hold the copyright and sometimes it's one person and sometimes it's more than one person and all of that has been worked out i think with respect to dramaturgs and how they can effectively advocate to have the the playwrights work uh respected and uh avoid the problems that we've been talking about here i don't think i i think that we shouldn't limit it to the playway i think what we talked about earlier is the most important thing everybody who's involved in the theater everybody who works on the production from the assistant stage manager to the actors i mean we all know actors can be very focused on one thing you know themselves and they need to open up their minds as well the designers to be aware that when something goes off the tracks somebody needs to put their hand up and not send an anonymous letter to me saying so-and-so is doing this it's just to say wait a minute here's what the appropriate thing to do is and we need to talk about how to make this work so that everybody's happy the theater is a collaborative art it should not come down to one person having to make that decision i i agree i just want to say quickly too that it is it's very hard though because i know like even in hands on her body everybody everybody's soul is going on everybody and and they thought it was weird and they felt uncomfortable with the actors like this is the professional act company this is the only place they can get paid they don't want the director was the artistic director i mean it's very hard sometimes to come forward so i'm kind of an advocate of the anonymous phone call to the dramatist guild because i want him to no you know what i mean oh yes i you know anywhere but because i know it's such a small world and you if you're the whistleblower you then you know you're you know so people are worried about that so and anyway you can do it but i do agree it's everybody's responsibility i think we're running out of time uh but uh i'd like to thank our panelists for being here and uh offering your great depth of knowledge and insight on the issue as a as a takeaway uh i think they very agreed from the author to the uh the agents and the agencies and uh the thinking against censorship is if you have an idea talk about it don't keep it to yourself don't try to sneak it under the table but don't let it lie fallow because it could actually be a great idea so keep the conversation open and honest and come forward with with all those great ideas that are going to make the next great thing happen thank you all for being here yes thank you you have 15 minutes do what you want to do and then come on back for the inclusion and diversity conversation