 I'm Courtney Kachuba, I'm a Marfanita associate here at Samuel French, as well as Rights Week coordinator. So thank you so much for coming to our fourth and final panel of Rights Week 2014. First of all, a really big thank you to HowlRound who's watching this on live stream right now up in Boston. They've been a great collaborator on this project and we're just happy to get these issues out and being discussed. A big part of that is all of you here and all of you watching right now. Out of curiosity, could you raise your hand if you've been to all the panels the whole week? Two of the panels? It's also a really exciting time for us because we moved into this space on November 4th. So this is our first sort of industry open event. And going along with that, we have a couple of other events going on. In August, we are having our 39th annual Off Off Broadway short play festival. OOB as we call it is. It's a really exciting festival. It's from August 5th through the 10th. We got how many submissions is here? Oh, almost 1400. Almost 1400 and narrowed it down to just 30 short plays. A lot of time was taken. They are presented during the week and then they move on gradually to a finalist round on Saturday. So I encourage all of you to come. It's a great time to support the arts well not young but emerging playwrights. And it's a fun time so check it out. Also, after today, after the panel, we'd like to invite all of you to stay for a little reception in the back. You can check out the rest of our opposites. Yes. And one other thing, cell phones. Please silence them, but feel free to use them. I will be live tweeting from right here. Some of our panelists might be live tweeting. And it's been a really fun component of the week to have all of that going on. So without further ado, I will hand it over to our panel and our wonderful moderator, writer and theater director, Isaac Butler. Hello, everyone. Here today and people at the internet. Come on, go ahead and come on. These are our lovely panelists who I'll introduce in just one second. Lovely panelists. Good to have a game show. Great. All right. Okay, great. So Stephen Chaklison is a general manager, producer and professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. Bruce Lazarus. Here. Sorry. Bruce Lazarus is the executive director of Samuel French. Brad Lawrence is the director of licensing for Samuel French. Laura Pan is the executive director of the Estates Directors and Choreographers Society. And Tori Keenan-Zelt is a playwright, screenwriter and VP of ops at Congee. So please welcome our distinguished panelists. So today, the big topic of the day is piracy, piracy in the digital age. And so since you work firmly in the digital age, Tori, and since maybe not everyone here is familiar with Congee, I thought I would give you a chance to talk about the company and also if you could kick us off by talking a little bit about, like, how you define theatrical piracy or how you think about it as even a term. Sure. Hi. Congee is a tech startup. It's designed to be a community for dramatic writers. Playwrights and screenwriters and people who work with them as collaborative artists or in another way like agents, producers, directors, and publishers. It started out as a tool for sharing scripts, for making scripts available to that community, recognizing that writers also need to be able to control their work and to manage its sharing. So it's a platform on which writers can share scripts securely. They're searchable as 10-page previews. And then writers manage permission to view a full script. So if I want to read your script, I request your permission, you grant it to me. And then it's shared to my personal bookshelf and I can read it. And if you upload a new script, I have the new script. And there are professional connections and all kinds of things that are built out from that. But it started as that tool and we've developed a community around that. I'm sorry, what was the question? So obviously if you're controlling, if I need your permission to view the script. What is piracy? From a writer's perspective, I define it as any unauthorized use of my writing of my script. So that could be a production that changes an element that I've put into the script. It could be a production that I'm on air of and have not given permission for either through my publisher or my own terms. Yeah, I'll kind of talk about it. Yeah, great. So those are two definitions, right? Unauthorized changes to a script and unauthorized production. So how else are we thinking about this term piracy? So in regards to plays, authors' rights, there's a few different things. And I just wanted to also address it from the digital age since that's our topic today. You know, this piracy as in reprinting or putting online someone's script. Unauthorized, the playwright isn't going to pay for it. Maybe the playwright doesn't even want it up. It's on digital platforms. We work very hard to take those things down. We worked at what was the number of how many we took down in the last 10 days or so? It was over 470. In 10 days? Yes. Wow. So that's how long their blogs being like, hey, I have a PDF of pterodactyls or whatever. This is Rexon's third grade class doing our 10. Right, so we go on and we scour the web for it. And so that's as far as scripts go. We also, and part of the digital age is it makes it easy for us to find those things because whether it's a Google search or we have some secret web crawlers, we go out and find those things. And then also from a production standpoint, it's unauthorized productions. We have lots of pirated productions out there where people don't tell us about it. We just go ahead and produce it. And it's insidious. Again, we find them. We sense the system. We shut them down. I actually heard a funny story. It's not so funny, really. But someone, not our property, someone was doing reasons to be pretty. And they changed the title of the play to Ugly People. They didn't credit the author. Was the author in the original? They didn't credit the authors. How do you find that? Someone ratted it out. And so it was discovered. So there's pirated productions. But piracy goes a little farther and deeper than that. If someone is changing the work of an artist, they're not only pirating their economic, financial interest in it, but they're pirating their emotional well-being. We had a situation recently where one of our artists went to see a musical that she spent years writing only to find out that the director had rearranged the songs and changed the things. And she's sitting there for two hours being like, you know, feeling violated by it. So this emotional capital that's also being pirated. Interesting. Any other thoughts on just a baseline sort of how we're defining this term? Yeah, I think everything Bruce is talking about is absolutely correct. I would even, maybe for purposes of this discussion today, even open up the idea of piracy and make it a little more broad, you know, the unauthorized use of anything, any material protected by copyright. Because it's important that, well, we have to protect the playwrights, the authors' work. Playwrights, directors, they also have to be aware of the potential infringement that they could wind up, the types of situations they could be in. The internet has made material available, you know, instantaneously. So whether that's taking copyrighted work and, you know, pieces of existing written material and incorporating them in some way into a play, taking images and using them as part of a stage design, using music to set the mood of a show and, you know, you find this great piece online and you say, okay, well, let me put that as underscoring in this scene. So it's important, I think, that, you know, overall that as artists, we're all, everybody is respecting each other, whether it's a piece that was created, that was created, a visual piece, a music piece, a theater piece, and everybody needs to be educated so that everyone's rights are protected. I would just say, I mean, it's theft, and I agree with everything that's been said. Piracy is theft of someone else's property and the unlawful use of that. One of the things that we spend a lot of time trying to wrap our heads around is the unlawful capture of performance and distribution or exploitation. So what do you mean by exploitation? Is that like a, I'm directing a production of it and I see a film of a production of it? That means you could, and I did my own little, oh, let me check, because I haven't been on this site in a while today, and, you know, for $23.99, you can see beautiful, the musical, right now. Go ahead. Now, it may not be a very good production because it's from somebody's cell phone or actually they do shoulder cameras and capture, but you can go online right now and pay for, which means someone's being paid and it is not the artist. And you can watch, beautiful, you can watch anything you want. You know, some shows are only $14.99 if they've been around for a while. So people are sort of bootlegging shows in the kind of like 80s movie theater piracy kind of way. They are, they are. In the Seinfeld episode with... Absolutely, absolutely. And the question really is, now I think many of us understand that the 13-year-old girl, or I can say 12-year-old girl, my daughter, watching a YouTube clip in her bedroom, that actually avoids the web crawlers because they speed it up on my first second because I found her watching Shrek and my teenage son said, oh, yeah, mom, it's fine, they speed it up. So you couldn't tell it was speed it up, but it avoids the web crawlers because the rhythm of the music is just that much more different. So there's the unlawful capture and distribution, but the more and more things are captured lawfully, HD captures, there runs the risk of those being distributed than an exploited, unlawfully, nationally and internationally. So this is, and this is a place where we're all in this together because there's real money in them there, Hills, and it's not going to our artists. Interesting. Interesting. And I wonder, you know, I wonder based on this, because obviously like the other thing that happens on YouTube, which I guess is probably technically violation of copyright, like someone's daughter is in high school production, David Ives is all in the timing and they have like sure thing and they put it on YouTube so they can share it with her uncle or whatever. And that's technically violation of copyright, but we would probably say that's not as big a problem as bootlegging beautiful and selling it for $20. We have to actually take those down. No, I'm trying to take them down, but I'm wondering what are from your perspective sort of the biggest problems in this world of piracy? I would like to add though about YouTube, even though there may not be money generated from that, it could be such a horrible production that's out there that that could really influence the impact others wanting to do the show. And if that's what they see, then they're like, I'm not bothering with ever producing that show again. So there is that impact as well. Yeah, no, no, no, of course I'm not saying it's... I think there's a difference between sort of innocent, you know, capturing my daughter's high school performance and, you know, sort of malicious, whether it's charging money for it or out now, you know, a professional company changing someone's work. Right, right. Well, you know, there's other kinds of piracy too. We call it more of compliance or enforcement where people will cheat on their license. You know, they'll say that they're doing two performances and they're doing 20 performances. And they'll say they're doing it in a, you know, 100-seat theater and it's a 1000-seat theater. Well, they say they're charging $10 a ticket and it's $50 a ticket. And does that sort of stuff happen very often? It happens. I gave the numbers to Brad. I don't know how many... It happens frequently. I had a great conversation with the... Lori Tinson, our director of licensing compliance today. Since January, this is just since January, we have issued 30 cease and desist, like we have closed down on licensed productions. So one thing that we instill here is that when we hire new licensing representatives or licensing specialists, part of their training that is ingrained into them always have an eye on that website that people are talking to. Double-check everything they tell us. We're always constantly looking for everything that's out there is their application, actually expressing what is on their website because even though they initially tell us ticket prices are X amount and so many performances and these are the dates, we always have to confirm that because there's always, not always, but frequently there's a discrepancy between that. So everybody has on their good cop hat and their bad cop hat every day. I just want to add one other thing. When people... This is my take. I think it's human nature. If someone's taking a song or a movie, they're taking it from a Hollywood studio or a big record company. It's nothing to them. But you know in the theater, if you're taking it from a writer, writers, there are very few playwrights that really can earn a living in the theater and a lot of them try to. And when you take away that income from them, you're taking away their family's grocery money. You're taking away real money from a family. We as an agent, we take 10 or 20%, they're getting 80 or 90%. So you're taking the money away from them. They think even if they're taking it from Samuel French, but they're not. They're taking it away from the author. And that's really the shame here. Because if authors can't make a living in the theater, then they're not going to write. They're going to be busy making a living, doing something else. Right. I think there's also something very sad about the fact that when people are cheating on their licenses, what we're talking about are people who care enough to be doing theater in the first place. And seriously, if you're caring enough to be doing theater, then care about the artist who helped to create it and don't cheat on the $50 or whatever it will be, then people will go back to that. There was something, I wrote it down, and I have it with me, in your essay that you wrote about teachers teaching the value of art. Right. And that if you don't value artists, then... Right. Yeah. Do you remember what you wrote? Yeah, that was basically what I was saying. And actually this gets to a question I wanted to ask, for various definitions of piracy, where we're seeing it happen. My assumption is going into this is that a lot of this is happening in the education world. A lot of this is happening in colleges or student theater companies or in the amateur sector. And maybe I'm completely wrong about this in terms of unlicensed production, but it happens less frequently in the professional world because it's so visible that it's easy to catch it. Yeah. Again, that's my assumption. I can be wrong. So that was why I included that sentence about, hey, I have a feeling a lot of this goes on in the education world. I probably did it when I was in... I probably did a play without paying for it when I was in college. Oh, those many years ago. But one of the things that we can instill as educators as a value is that, hey, like, if you value art, you have to pay the people to make it. I think you're right. I think it does happen. And I think some of it is that we have not done the education that we need to do. And not only are they unlicensed productions, but they're replications of all of the artist's work. So they're replications of the designer's work, of the choreographer's work, of the... You know, it's everybody's work, of the director's work. So they're taking the unlawfully captured productions and they are unlawfully replicating the script, everything. And a lot of it is because some don't know that they can't do that. And some, because we haven't made it as easy as we need to for them to do that. And then some, I guess, are just mean. I would like to add to that. And what we here try to do at Samuel French is, particularly if it's an educational institution, we try to make it an educational experience. What is that? Well, a teaching moment. If you come to Steven, you're like, Steven, you really shouldn't have put on a, I don't know. Well, hopefully we catch it in advance or while it's going on. So instead of beating the heck out of them, we talk to them, we tell them exactly where it went wrong, what they were supposed to have done, how they were supposed to have done it. Usually, not always, but usually the teachers are horrified. Because, you know, sometimes teachers are the ones who get the coin flip in the teacher's lap and they're in charge of the play that year and they may not know. Oh, well, here's some scripts left over in the library. Let's just do a play. They may not know that there's actual copyright attached to that. So we try to make it an educational experience, but it does, it has to do with education. One of the things we recently became aware of, like a light bulb went off for us, that, you know, we send down our licenses and it's very clear that, you know, unauthorized changes, you can't make certain changes, whether it's to the order of the show or the placing of the intermission or changing the characters or the gender of the characters. You know, playwrights have certain restrictions. Others are free with it and the like. But it occurred to us that the director of the play may not see that license. There's some administrator who's signing off on that license. And so that teacher, or even in a professional situation, they didn't see that. Now we assume they know that. But so now, and I've been talking with Laura about this, we're in conversation about it. We would like to actually have the director of the play, you know, acknowledge that they know that they're not allowed to make unauthorized changes. Interesting. And I imagine like an unauthorized change to a show is a lot harder to catch than an unauthorized production because the Google alert goes off that reasons to be pretty is happening. You're like, hey, we didn't... What was at the top? Someone commented or there was a review that said, and in the top of the second half, there's not with the mission in this play. Or this new 90-minute version. Right, right, right. And so, you know, Steven, from a... I guess either an educator perspective, from an educators perspective, because you've talked for a long time at Columbia in that management program, I mean, do you guys... What conversations do you have around this stuff? I just, you know, speak about programs there. Is there ethics component to graduating from there? Is there... I know you teach classes on law and the arts and so... Well, you know, in terms of the theater management or producing program, which I run, we spend a lot of time dealing with rights issues. Coming out of their ears by the end of the first year, between, you know, really having dealt with issues of intellectual property, small rights, grand rights, licensing, work, assignment, all different aspects of it for the entire first year of the program. I think it's sort of a given, if it's a management or producing program, you're dealing with the business, you're dealing with the law, it's natural that you're going to be confronting those issues, dealing with that kind of curriculum. The problem is the, you know, enacting program, a directing program, even a playwriting program. And most of the time, you don't have a lot of exposure to the business of the business, right? You're dealing with the art of the business, but you're not dealing with the business. And, you know, if you're... maybe you have just the basics of getting an agent or what a contract is, that type of thing. But you're not really getting into what I think are really important, the important issues of intellectual property which are important or crucial for all artists to be aware of. You know, even in Columbia, there's been very little that's really structured in the graduate program as far as introducing the artists to these topics. We, in the past, have dealt with them pretty much on a one-off basis when a director has said, okay, this is what I want to do as my second year project, this is what I want to do as my thesis production. Then they go through a process where they are producer or manager who's a student and with the departmental staff of how to acquire the rights. And so, they learn by doing it. They're sort of mentored in that process. And is that because it tends to be, you know, an MFA Master's program, right? It's like, well, this is the art and you're here to nurture your art for a couple of years and you're probably spending tens of thousands of dollars to do so. And so we're not going to bother with the real world stuff. It's like, here is where you become an artist, right? And then, even though there's all these practical realities that are so important to that life. I think the artist want to teach the art and who can really blame that. We don't want to bother with the business side with those rules. But because, you know, you have a lot of really creative people out there who are students who are flexing their creative muscles and working in school. You know, they're doing their thesis production. They want to make the best production they've ever done. They're dreaming big. And they want to adapt. They want to change language. They want to change characters from male to female. They want to experiment in many different ways. And, you know, because they're being mentored through that process, we're able to either advise them or their faculty able to advise them. And sometimes we will actually go to a particular licensing company or an agent from whom we've gotten the rights and say, here's a request. Can we do this? So, you know, because we're Columbia, because we're high profile, we take these issues really seriously. Something that we've actually discussed fairly recently is a kind of a master class for all the first-year MFA students who come in to really introduce them to these basic concepts. In the same way that we're introducing them to, okay, here's how you produce a show in this particular theater or here's how you deal with tech in this particular theater. Let's also talk about, here's how you deal with rights and how you deal with projects. Because there's so much, you know, when you get into making theater in an educational setting, there's also a lot that goes into it as far as what people consider to be fair use, what they think they should be allowed to get away with, not when they're working extra-curricularly, but here, I've been paying so much money and spending all this time to become a theater artist. There's a certain amount of fair use and people throw that terminology around. That should just be entitled as part of my education to do this. And especially if I'm doing it and I'm not charging admission, there are a lot of thorny questions that come up. And I think it's really important for us to sort of start from the very beginning and set the ground rules. Interesting. And I was just going to say, we would be happy to be happy to come and be cast lecturers at one of those classes. Absolutely. You make things happen here. What's interesting is I did actually, and I know there's several programs at Columbia, so forgive me if I confused them, but I did go and speak with Anne Ogertz, class this year, which was fantastic. And I actually proposed to her that possibly Ralph Savage and I would be an interesting duo at some point to come in and talk with the directors and writers. Ralph Savage of the Dramatist Guild. Of the Dramatist Guild? Oh, yes. I assume you're getting along so well. I take it back. I'll call him tomorrow. But what's interesting is I think we have as the organization that represents professional directors and choreographers, I think probably some of what has happened, particularly with the proliferation of professional training programs, and I think the reliance that we have in the field on those programs is to train. So you get trained and then you're a professional. And I think there's assumptions made on both sides. I have to just sort of, you know, respond to some of this by, of course, saying that there is no support whatsoever from SDC as an organization for the unlawful, you know, changing, adapting manipulation of an author's property. I mean, that's just wrong. So how do we engage in that and what is the education of our members given that I think we probably on some level just, it's like, well, of course you can't do that. I mean, it's shocking. Of course you can't do that. So how did, where did we get confused and what happens in the training programs, what happens in the professional arena and how can we collaborate to strengthen the education. Is that right? Tori, I was wondering, you know, for you, I mean, have you, because you're our playwright on the panel, so at least have you had experience in this of knowing of a production that changed your work or did your work without you telling it, telling it, giving it a mission or, I mean, have you actually... No, I haven't had it personally. I have had people contact me about a script that is published and ask if they can do the production without paying the licensing fee because it's a fundraiser or something like that. And, you know, I want people to be doing my work so my gut says, sure, but I think that I as a writer need to be more careful about if I'm going to make a decision to share my work in that way recognizing that that's what I'm doing, that I'm actually subsidizing the production in some way. And I think when we talk about value and ascribing value to scripts, especially in educational setting, there's a lot of funny territory because my goal as an early career writer as an MFA student was to get my scripts good enough that people want them and they want to pay money for them. But there's so much work that goes into developing a play. I mean, it takes years and years, right? So it already has value before I am making a living as a playwright and how can I leverage it and recognize that that's happening. And that's not been part of the conversation at least in my case. Interesting. Are you currently in an MFA? No, I am about a year old. Oh, great. Cool. I guess, and this is sort of a question for anyone who wants to leap in and take it. I mean, obviously, if you're published by Sam French, you have a certain structure behind you that represents you, that helps deal with this issue, that sends those cease and desist letters. You know, at Setwork you have an agent, they have your management team, you have a team behind you, but I'm sure for plenty of people watching this or following it on Twitter, they don't have a team. They're a younger, earlier career playwright and they, you know, a Google work for their name comes out and they find out in Sheboygan someone is doing a play there who knows maybe New York. And what, just to speak to that experience for a little bit, what structures are in place that that artist can take advantage of? That they can, do you have to hire a lawyer? Do you have to like, you know, so what do you do in that instance? And anyone who wants to jump in on that? Not to jump in. You know, number one, you can call the dromedist here, I'm sure they're happy to help whether you're a member or not, although it's not too expensive to become a member of the dromedist killer. But you know, you could be your own lawyer, you don't need a lawyer to send the cease and desist letter, and I'm sure you could find the cease and desist letter on the internet. Probably copyright. Probably copyright. Sorry to say that because you know, I actually had a cease and desist. I actually saw a contract that came in and the attorney had copyrighted his contract. I never saw that before. Because the lawyer's traditionally cut and pasted. Yeah. So, I think it's really about valuing your work. Just like they asked you to do it for free. When you sent it, I would have said, pay me a hundred dollars and I'll make a donation of a hundred dollars. But at least it's valuing your work. I think if we don't value the work, then it has less value. But I think people can take care of themselves. Volunteer lawyers for the arts. Right. Interesting. And I guess to circle back to the internet question, where this is piracy in the digital age, to get to the second half, Laura, what efforts, you were talking about people are bootlegging productions of plays and they're selling their, again, Kramer with the video camera style version of beautiful online. And what is the STC doing around this sort of stuff? Well, first of all, I think that the solution to that is ultimately going to rest in collaboration with a group of artists and certainly, and, you know, unions and guilds. We spend a fair amount of time talking about this at COBA, which is the Coalition of Broadway Unions and Guilds, as much of this, although not exclusively, but much of it is Broadway commercial work that is, has the higher value. So it's a collaborative effort, I think, that's going to sort of help us find our way. But I think what we're specifically trying to do is create relationships and try to find the model that works for the lawful capture and the lawful distribution and make that, it's not unlike, you know, frankly, iTunes, right? It's not unlike what the music industry did. We've got to find a way to actually allow our product and our work. We can't deny that I mean, with the advent of HD captures and, you know, technology, you can actually capture live theater in a way now that's quite dynamic and pretty fabulous. And I'll pay 20 bucks to go see Phaedra, you know, from NT Live, because it's really great. So it doesn't replace the live experience, but we can't deny that this is happening and it's going to happen more and more. So how do we figure out how to embrace it, make it possible, make sure the artists are compensated up front and that there's some sort of back end. So we're working with producers and our collaborators to try to figure out how to do that. So just part of what you're saying is that one of the ways to control piracy is to find a way to distribute the product in a way that people can get their hands on it let's say a reasonable price, however we're defining that, and that cuts out a certain amount of the people who are turning to, you know, I mean that's one of the things that they show, one of the things that iTunes did if I remember correctly, they took a chunk of the piratey mark because there was a cheaper and more convenient way to get music. And there was a study done in London, I'm sorry, there was a study done in London around the NT Live about, you know, does it actually are you hijacking theater go, is it going to, you know, cannibalize your theater goers, and it's not, the people that are going to go see it in the movie theater are either the people who are going to see it in the theater as well because they like that dynamic or they're never going to see it in the theater. So it's just more people. So I don't think cannibalization is a problem. I think that study even showed that people who had never been to the National Theater reported they were more likely to go when they were visiting London because they had seen an NT Live. So I think it's a room. May I ask her a follow-up question? Yeah, sure. Do I get her opinion? So I was just curious, do you feel like then the live-stage experience right now, live-stage theater, we're behind in all of this? Yes. I think we I think sometimes we feel a little precious about ourselves and our work. And I think I think we are behind because we just weren't going to go there, right? Because the live theater experience is live. And what happened is sort of technology and a few smart entrepreneurs and then a lot of kids and a lot of young people and a lot of it figured out okay, we're doing it anyway. So I do think we thought it'll never happen. And I think we're I think we were wrong. And that there's no money in it. There's no money in it, right? There's no money in it. But if you had told me 10 years ago they paid 200 bucks a month to watch TV, right? But somebody's paying $20 for that bootleg beautiful. So there is somebody who will pay money for it. Exactly. I mean, but I think 10 years ago I would have been forgetting you know, nobody's going to pay to see a Broadway show on their television. Sure they are. They're watching them on their kindles. Right. Interesting. Interesting. We had a question I don't know if this is someone from the audience or from Twitter. I just asked them. Asking about the just sort of the general issue of the publication not the production of scripts, but the publication of scripts without permission online which of course I guess makes it easier to produce them without permission because then you can just you know, you search that play right and you find them. And obviously this is something that was a big concern for Kanji because you can only read a 10 page excerpt, right? So I don't know is the you know, from that perspective Yeah, that's a slightly different question because it sounds like that's about other people publishing a script on behalf of a writer. Kanji is really trying to solve the problem of how do you make your work more available and discoverable while still protecting it and managing it. Yeah, but the thinking behind the 10 page preview was that that's sort of a standard with lit managers, right? You do get a 10 page preview, you evaluate the script and then you decide if you want to read more often. So that's enough to at least get a feel and give people a taste and then as the writer you want to manage access to the full piece because that has real value. The scripts are not downloadable from Kanji and they're not printable although if it's the internet, if you're in Treppe you can get screenshots but that's like a copy of the script, right? It takes time and yeah, so it's sort of... No, because Apple too, so many times. You guys will just ask me for it. Right, right, yeah. What we do with our... When we do a musical we have rental material that we rent the orchestrations and the like and when we send out a license and those rental materials are marked with the licensee's name and the order number. So I mean someone could I guess white out everything and scan it and all that but it makes it very hard for them so when we find materials that is pirated we know where the source is. Interesting, you're right because their name is just right there, right? I promise it wasn't. Really? Actually I wanted to check. No, I remember having to erase those, right? Whenever you did the show at summer camp you always had to erase them so that they could go in with those that you wouldn't get. At what camp? Bucks Rock, can you go for Ken? The... Yeah. So you know to speak more of this digital age question do you guys feel just in general I mean obviously you said that the internet in some ways makes it much easier to track when the piracy is occurring but it also creates some new mechanisms via which it occurs, right? So you know now that we're in web 4.0 or whatever era of the web we're in do you think that we're doing a better job of controlling it than we used to? A worse job of controlling it? Is it harder? Is it easier? And what new strategies and you know obviously you've spoken to one new strategy more what new strategies, any of you do you feel we could use to sort of get ahead of the digital innovation? I think there's actually less of it but I think we find it more so it feels like there's a lot I think it's been going on for a long time and just you know haven't known about it so now we see it and now we go after it I'm sorry I agree and I also feel like even if a theater thinks they got caught and they erased it completely from their website guess what somebody's in that cast and they still have it on their Facebook page so we have captured a lot of things that's on Facebook page as well so I think it's So I say we're not really I mean as a licensor we want to protect our authors but you know the producers also are customers so we're not looking to really embarrass them we're looking to educate them we're looking to have them do the right thing you know at some point actually I once heard someone say you know the customer is always right until they're not your customer customer who's stealing from us is not our customer anymore in which case then we're going to do what we have to do but we want to listen we love theater we want people to be making theater we want the playwright to make money we want the theater to make money we want the audience to enjoy the show so we're facilitators of theater so we're not looking to um to squelch them we just want them to play fair Any other thoughts on the internet whether it's made it easier or more just more visible I think it's made it easier to replicate full productions I think we find um you know community theaters you know more semi-professional companies probably that are able to literally replicate an entire production and we work quite closely with the designers to help each other it's like oh my set oh so you're you know to make sure we're um trying to find those whether those are lawfully licensed plays whether the playwright or the composer lyricist um are part of that or not we don't I guess we assume they're lawfully licensed we haven't put you in that loop maybe we should because we um but but I think it has made it easier and some of that when it comes to preservation and legacy and you know some of that will end up being great because don't we all wish we have more of Fosse's work you know available from a historical perspective for example but I think it has made it harder to um easier to do and harder to keep track of in some ones from that point of view which is a little different I would say email for the strips and you know it makes it so much easier to share and to pass on something that is very valuable and so now the challenge is how do we create tools that will that will let us share them but also let us track them and treat them as the value of money interesting I think um even though it's a little early I think it might be fun to because some people are tweeting some questions stuff might be fun to throw to the audience people seem very eager over here and I don't know anyone's name so you serve they're like sort of like shaking us back here not like angrily just like excited so they explore some of the key guys there's like a big problem that the music industry had, the film industry had in the 90s they weren't recognizing how quickly technology was moving and therefore they weren't valuing their audience we talk a lot about like audience is not valuing art which is very true we haven't talked about value like Broadway plays cost like $400 you know or whatever for a ticket we are no longer valuing our consumers you know you see what's up with that college you hear me that like probably has a great audience out there like a bunch of kids in like you know California would love to see that but like they have no access to it like it also you know like your daughter did um so my question is sort of like how are we looking to um better democratize like the art film that we are in because right now we work in an art film that is very much like an ivory tower that makes it very difficult for people to give things in a way that uh in a way that is like just not free but like accessible because if you look at like television that started valuing their artists valuing their audience is a lot more and you now pay 200 dollars to do they also all include playwrights exactly so like now they see people looking more like there's like a world where people want to watch a show like a community even though like it's not making that much money they're like they're doing things like this so how are you guys as theater creators and like what's your name Jeremy so Jeremy's question is about you know sort of the other way of this two-way street right it's not only how do we get audiences to value the art although sometimes it's also about theater practitioners valuing the art that they're making but how do we get artists to value the art and also how do we get the artists or the producers to value the audience and it sort of gets back to your point Laura and I think I raised this in the piece that I wrote about you know like how do you democratize it how do you offer something at a way that people can access it and that is at a price that you know seems reasonable I know that's a really vague term right but you know so how do we kind of is some of this a response to the inaccessibility of the work so what do we do about that absolutely I mean I think it's as I said it lies in trying to figure out who we partner with and how we create models that work for the lawful capturing and distribution in other ways how are you going to get a Broadway ticket for a musical below 150 bucks you know I mean that's like a huge thing that's a big that's a big gnarly problem that we have but there are other ways to get the work out the problem with the theater is that there's a ceiling on capacity there's only so many seats in the theater and the theater's got to figure out how much money to charge in order to pay for all of those artists and all of those designers and all of the stage hands and whatever and make a profit for investors so it's built into it it's not like a movie where if it's a hit there's an unlimited number of screens you can go to one thing I will say is that right now there's over a thousand people who could be watching this on power and they're engaging with us on Twitter so we can do that in this space why can't we do that on like a Spotify or theater that's a great idea that's NT live that's NT yeah you can subscribe to NT live or the digital theater the other one they have there is also a if anyone in the audience knows I do please feel free to speak to this there's also oddly on the other end of the spectrum with like more underground experimental work there is a pay per view internet service like Young Jean Lee's on the boards on the boards that started that in Seattle and I do you know does anyone here actually use on the boards do you want to but I also would like to add there is New York City theater but then thriving theatrical world beyond west of the Hudson River so there is a lot of theater going on out there for not a lot of money and a lot of theaters every week have paid what you can and that's both professional and amateur so it's easy for us to be here in our insular situation think about how much tickets cost here but there is a thriving vital community west of the Hudson River too as well so I think it is and your work is getting done out there I think it's inevitable that Broadway is ultimately going to embrace the digital distribution of the work that we create it's going to take time it's you know we talk about the education of students there is a big educational process as well for the people producing and directing and writing work for Broadway and for you know major commercial and not-for-profit theater there's so many issues and so many different I shouldn't say factions many different groups and their respective concerns that need to be heard need to be dealt with from you know from the point of view of it's going to cannibalize my audience it's going to potentially cannibalize my licensing down the road sure there's all sorts of union stuff there's huge costs and we need to make it much more economically viable to be able to capture and then have everybody share and participate in profits down the line success there's the issue of well what if we capture it and it's not quite exactly the way we wanted it or what if we capture it and it looks like that old fashioned great performances broadcast of three cameras standing there locked in this little television frame which I agree we've gotten so much better about how we can capture a live experience so little by little we will get there it's inevitable crazy capture conversation with somebody that just goes to show how the producers are really part of this and have to understand the artist's right to benefit from this because this has to do with a very popular show that was captured and the plans for a kind of cine cast NT live although not NT live this was several years ago and trying to figure out what the front end, back end, all the billing all the stuff you have to figure out when you do this and because commercial Broadway shows can now be captured in their entirety for promotion there was a moment where this person I was talking to actually said well you know we could just say this is promotional to advocate or promote the amateur licensing of this so we're capturing the Broadway show we're screening it on hundreds of screens from across the country and selling lots of tickets but we're going to call it promotional because we really want to do this to push the amateur rights now they you know I was like oh you got it's like well I'm just saying we could say it yeah but you're not going to say it because that's absurd you know so yes unions have to work with producers but frankly producers have to understand that but that's how far like a producer would go to try to maybe not pay an artist unbelievable we got a question over here I want to make sure I actually wanted to ask this question on weeks the only question I've asked on weeks I'll ask the question I'll add a few sentences of backup the question is does theater belong in the digital medium the reason why I ask is because music, books have all moved into the digital space and have been very much well adopted but as a response we're now in a time where people started to move more back to analog so you can buy I personally click vinyl records you can buy cassette tapes of current bands who release their new albums on cassette books, small letterpress mdpress and stuff started releasing physical books that are you know that you might want to put on a shelf the year itself is an analog experience and we haven't quite figured it out yet in a way like iTunes that is spot on or Spotify so are we just trying to force the round peg into the square hole and what's your name? Ryan so Ryan has a question about you know obviously like part of theater's essential appeal is its liveness right that's what makes it a media and so should we even be thinking about well how do we force this live thing into this replicable medium and what happens to theater when it is broadcast on the screen instead of well I think that's a really great question and what occurs to me is is that you know a movie or a record is meant to be broadcast television shows meant to be broadcast and live in some sort of recorded form and the the way we replicate the theater is by having groups do it live all across the country professional and amateur groups performing the show that is the replica of theater and it is an analog medium and the stock and amateur licensing of it is the replica and correct me if I'm wrong but I sort of feel like there's also been a change in our sort of understanding of what a regional production even is and I'm thinking about if you buy a production script of I don't know streetcar Elia Kazan's production is detailed in there very carefully from small stage directions to the to the set and everything like that and there was a way in which you're speaking in dialogue with or maybe even replicating to some extent what that production looked like and that script kind of enables you to do that and we don't think that way anymore we're not thinking like oh well this production in you know I'm like from DC so I'll say this production in Washington DC is kind of like the one that you could have seen in New York we're saying no no if you do that in DC it has to be its own independent thing with its own independent ideas etc I feel like part of this is that there's a cultural shift there right maybe it's not formal but I think it just comes with the territory but you know it's one of the nice things one of the things I really like about what we do as Animal French is that you know I equated with like the gaming industry we have all of these kids who are virtuoso gamers and I said to my son once would you rather watch the movie or would you rather play the game he said I'd rather play the game and I said why it wasn't his exact words but basically what he said was when I play the game I am the hero when I watch the movie I'm watching I'm the hero and the nice thing about theater and about doing it in the stock and amateur world is that all of these people who want to participate and they get to be the hero they get to play the parts and therefore I think you know theater has that that life in it that is that transcends the other I would also say when we're talking about the relationship between stage and screen experiences that already happened in our culture because TV came out of theater and early TV was basically captured wave productions and it's evolved and it's become more filmic and now film language is shaped by the perspective of the camera and so similarly you kind of have to be one character as you're watching a movie and on stage you're experiencing it as yourself and so if we're capturing a stage production that is inherently different from making a movie of the stage production I personally am really glad that we have captured some wonderful productions like the original Into the Woods The Watcher on Netflix I wouldn't be able to do that I don't think that it's even more necessary Interesting, interesting, yes One comment I'd like to make about we're noticing now the live filming Sound of Music last year and now they're doing Peter Pan which I'm very excited about I must say that's different than watching the movie of it and the kids took to it I'm ahead of the drama department at LaGuardia and all the kids watched Sound of Music and I swear to God none of them if I held up Julie Andrews on the cover of Sound of Music they're out the door but the fact that it was live and people could have like messed up I'm sorry That's a hook and they were interested by that and they're all over Facebook about Christopher Walken playing Captain Hook they can't wait to see how he's going to do it so that's a whole different experience than watching Sir Overcharge and even though that's a live taping too but it's created quite a buzz for kids and it's a very exciting process Anyway, that's just a comment I have one suggestion I say 2,000 kids every fall for auditions to come into our freshman class and because there has been such a destination of the arts in the middle school middle schools I have kids coming in and doing two monologues and they will be doing a scene where they play both George and Emily they do not know what a monologue is so this is the school where maybe when they decide to do a play they don't know the rights they don't know what a monologue is they don't know anything especially the schools from the Bronx these kids are plueless and starving starving for something so it might be a nifty idea maybe to put a video on something really easy and send it to the principals of middle schools and high schools letting them know about how excited you are that they might want to do plays and they might have to put them on themselves and maybe you could get kids doing it themselves but they need to follow these rules and then there was some give and take about how much that would cost and since this year I paid $25,000 to do grease that sort of puts your height the best we could do was breaking we didn't make a penny because we started off with a $25,000 deficit but we did it and it was great and it was great for morale and the kids loved it but there might be some give and take there might be some give and take especially in the middle schools or the schools in areas that really have no arts that you sent them a very short video take five minutes about when you don't have an arts program that's really on place here's the rules you have to follow in order to do it and you have any questions call us and the kids would like to call us call us and make it very welcoming as opposed to scolding we might be able to do some real education and support you and support the school and what's your name? Sandy from LaGuardia High School Sandy from LaGuardia just because I have to repeat makes a really interesting point about finding ways to reach students who often come into arts programs are very green don't know how the system works using even just a simple short video saying hey here's what you need to do if you want to do a play I'd love to get your guys comments on that but you also brought up a second question which I just thought on a factual level is interesting to know how are the licensing rates for educational productions at various levels where do those numbers come from who sets them etc etc so you're even one of those first of all Sandy I just want to say that I think that's a great idea and we would love to have your input on it we'll make a video on it we'll do it but we need some educators to consult with us well that would be me there's Abby Van Nooster Abby can you be male this week already is there anyone who's having this is great and I've seen some of your productions at your school they're great I will tell you this I think one of the overarching themes of this week that we've discussed that has come out of all of this is the greater need for education in all areas so I think probably what our big takeaway from this whole week is that there is a lot more education that needs to take place and I think that what you've just said is a great place to start so that's great I've always been just curious about how do the rates for how does the LaGuardia High School wants to do Greece it will cost them 25,000 so how do those decisions about the different rates of the different levels get made Brad do you want to hand it over? we have a formula that's pretty similar to what all of the licensing agencies have and it's kind of a secret formula and it's always it's pretty much across the board it's usually very very similar we have one or two titles in our catalog that are considered premier titles and we have one of them and it's very it has a very high royalty attached to it that's thank you I wasn't going to say that but most of as for the if it's an amateur play just a strict play the royalty price is on the website there's no secret there there's some tiered situations where if there's a few more seats or if the ticker price is raised it may be adjusted a little bit there but for the amateur we take what we consider to be the projected gross of what the amateur situation will be and then we fix a percentage of that fee and we are almost completely all aligned in that with the other agencies there are a couple of plays that are users that are a little bit pricey for the most part we have thank you for the for the most part for our school rates have not kept up with the cost of inflation or cost of living we're charging a fraction relatively speaking of what we used to charge in the 30s and 40s and 50s everything else is not offered price ours is creeped up what do we charge for most plays at 75 dollars in performance back then we were charging a whole lot more money back then so you know it's still a pretty good deal on most things there are as Brad said some premium titles that just command that and a lot of that is driven by by the authors we represent authors and if they want us to charge more money for it and they're willing to do with less productions that's where we are you had a question sir I hope I have a real topic here Google is doing a mass I don't think they do you want to have me come soon you're talking about the google books project where they're I do you guys Joe do you want to do you have a question what is the question I could actually I managed the google book project I'm the lit manager I know I mean it's a very short answer but I mean google is opting for things that they don't are public domain they actually get publishers the option as to how much of the book goes online as to how much doesn't as to how much is exposed Sam Elbridge hasn't uploaded any books in a while I think in like two to three years but when we were doing it to be actively we were only opting for 10% of the book to be available and they don't show five pages in order so actually if you are looking to plus it's very hard to rip a google book but you can't ever really get a sense of the play I actually use it now when we have licensing questions about swear words sometimes I'll pull up our box samples and search for swear words in a book but it's actually pretty hard to rip a monologue cool I imagine that's another thing that happens actually cause you mentioned swear words right there another thing that I imagine happens in the educational setting is that there's certain like I don't know that we run in our eighth grade production who's afraid of Virginia Woolf which I will go see and I'll film you the vast majority of authors are willing to make changes to their play if requested they just want to be asked there are some authors that say this is my play if you don't want to do swear words don't do my play do somebody else's play but don't take my play and change it okay I have to add this to this too ask ASK ask I've been working here for 20 years and I just tell people ask the question ask us first we will work with the agents we will call up the playwrights ourselves we will try to get answers for you just second and you're always charged there is nothing more difficult for everybody involved than to have to untangle it on the end if a playwright finds out that some changes have been made and the production is already up all they know is that changes have been made it may be just some simple language changes taking some nasty words and taking some swear words but once they know that it's been changed it is so difficult to unravel please ask us I ask my staff today we all look since January 1st we have made over almost 300 contacts with agents and playwrights asking about things like gender casting changes can we take out swear words can we trim it a little bit because it needs to come in under two hours if we know in advance we can handle it in a much better fashion than after the fact okay done now now we can go in I was just going to ask you for statistics before you were sort of confessing having infringed on copyrights I'm sure we all had it I used to teach theater with Middles and high school students and I would have beg borrowed or stolen anything to work with them and because I thought that I was stealing from Sam French not from the writer and if that were really and if that were part of the conversation and it were an opportunity for the kids to connect with the writer in some way that could be really exciting no I'm going to tell a story before I came to work with Samuel French my youngest son was in third grade and they were doing wicked I don't know this man what was really terrible was I went into the classroom and the teacher had a bootleg bootleg video of the Broadway show and she was using that to teach the students so I was really offended because not only was she doing that but she was teaching my child that it was okay to take other people's work so I wanted to say something but you know what I think this is true for I tell on myself because I think it's true for parents and people all over that maybe you want to say something but you know what my wife said to me don't say anything this is his teacher just let it be he doesn't need to stand out in the classroom he doesn't need to be the bad guy that showed him down there show so I didn't say anything I wanted to say something but I didn't say anything so I'm saying it now you're right I'm saying it I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry it's more criminal than that because you've taken a completely creative, innovative, artistic force in third grade and made them imitate something out of date how dare you do that how do you know what they would have come up with on their own it's just heartbreaking and I think someone related I love when they record and broadcast theater I want more of it because it gives me access to it and I've had conversations with people asking why doesn't this happen more and some people bring up that choreographers and directors don't necessarily want the recording available because then other people will do that choreography or take those directing ideas into their own productions and that's even less tangible than the words of the music and what's your answer Joe Joe is raising the question of directorial and choreographic plagiarism if there's a record of a production and this is actually still I think both legally and in reality a pretty controversial issue if there's a record of a production with blocking that you can write down and imitate and then you take that blocking what is that, how does that work and is that part of the resistance to moving into the digital age and lawful distribution well I don't think there's a lot of resistance to lawful capture and distribution you know there are some of you know there are certainly some of the school of thought it's a live experience, it should only be live it shouldn't be captured I want people to come to the theater but for the most part I don't think there's I think people just want to be captured or acknowledged I do think much like the wicked story and this is at a professional level where we actually learn that an unlawfully captured production you don't even have to write down the blocking they sit in the rehearsal hall with their laptop and say okay now what you do on this okay I'm not lying you cross over there and you come down here on that I mean there are theater companies where that is okay to do and for directors and choreographers that's not okay to do now if you want to do it ask I was saying earlier you know it's sure it's send me 50 bucks but really could you put a sign in the lobby now that says inspired by the original production directed by so and so you know don't misrepresent that that's your work because it's not your work it's my work as a director or choreographer certainly licensing would be great income would be great where it's appropriate blah blah blah but it really is you cannot misrepresent that you directed and choreographed that show when you didn't we're working on a few plays and musicals where we are creating a director's guide that can be licensed so that the director is a compensated player it's a good show line for example 39 steps people constantly are recreating the Broadway direction because it's amazing direction it makes the show work so we're working with the original director to create a bible for that can I ask Laura a question so I have a question because this is an area that I don't know as well so if a theater wants to choose one of your members works their direction do they contact you well this is what happens this is where I think we have to take responsibility just like we have to take some responsibility for understanding what's possible in the digital age we have to and in education we have to find ways for that to be easier because it's not clear it's not clear what the path is we need our own video to compliment your video to middle schools it says and if you don't want to actually direct 12th night like a cutting and a cast breakdown and a directors whatever you can get that again for whatever that might be it's not easy to do you can we do have instances where we have been contacted we always help facilitate the relationship we also have things that we've caught and said oh well that would be so and so's production and gotten either compensation or credit but it's not easy to do it's also an opportunity for this director or the choreographer to say I'll come do it, Amy I'll come do it, yeah exactly so it's making it possible that we have to do that and I think as people get inspired because they see more things online and they want it to look like that I'm in Omaha and I want to do it just like they did it on Broadway we have to make that possible for them to do we always encourage original work first I mean that's but in the case of wanting to replicate we shouldn't get it possible yes, hey my name is Ira I am really excited about this whole conversation because I'm working on a play about Napster right now called Dark Side Where's That Courage two boys called Sean it's gonna be cool they call those words I don't hear at all Jeremy knows what he's talking about I like surveys and like information gathering through like crowd sourcing because I'm from the digital age I have a series of references that I'm going to ask you about if you are aware of them if you could raise your let's say left hand am I raising my left hand? left hand, is that good? cool, alright if you've heard of this, raise your hand mash up what is a mash up? it's like a sampling of a lot of different things kind of mashed up together my son talks about mash up right? is that close? anybody who watches Glee knows what it is definitely has anyone has anyone had a good point has anyone know what a remix is what is a remix? the original thing redone in a different format taking a song and turning it into a dance mix can you give an example of a good remix? is that one song I like John Legend exactly band and piano, what's the name of the song? all of it yeah there's another version of this one can I just ask because we only have a few minutes left how many questions has anyone ever heard of Sean Parker? yes is that your name? answer yeah you know what else he does? he's played by Justin Timberlake so moving on other questions yes I just have a question about assuming that we may be moving into a world where fear is digitally available and where that can possibly be standard rather than exceptional like the sound of music production that's televised or into the woods from decades ago how will that factor into the contracts that a writer signs the contracts that an actor signs in anybody else involved in the show knowing that it may be available on Netflix or available for some sort of streaming widely rather than that being maybe maybe maybe this happens when it starts to become not probably this will happen that's an interesting hypothetical as we move more in digital distribution what happens to the contracts I think I will punt this to our lawyer on the panel first for your I'm actually going to punt this to Laura and she's the union person because your union's been there since this day already starting to embed in our collective bargaining agreements which then become the agreements for directors things like collaboration language meaning that the director the stage director has the right to collaborate with the capture director on the capture, the shot list so we're beginning to put things like that to make sure our billing's in line so we're already beginning to move towards believing that this is going to happen the economic terms we're in the process of trying to figure out whether it's what the front end, what the back end what goes into the CBA, what's left to the artist that happens to have the great agent versus the other one that they just landed their first cat's production and so they're screwed because they didn't have the agent so we're trying to figure out what the model's right now but we're moving to make sure the creative terms are protected as we begin to try to understand the economic I think in terms of you brought the actors for example this is all as we were saying it's going to become standard I believe and right now any new musical that gets produced every actor that gets hired 99% of the time they're going to be given along with their regular contract or a cast album writer and that spells out the terms for what happens, what they get paid front end, back end when a cast album is recorded and I think ultimately we're going to wind up with the same thing for capturing the video I know that the first class writes option might be a reproduction as a film or a Broadway production of a revival but if that becomes so standard just such that we might want to start posting it on some medium online what would the contracts look like for new writers that are signing contracts and how might that play into existing contracts that existed before we even knew that the digital agent was coming or that even TV was coming oh that's interesting so you're talking about what do we do with stuff that's still under the right that was written before the internet what happens to those agreements one of the interesting cases not in theater was with the re-release of the sitcom WKRP when they put out a box set of it DVDs didn't exist when the rights agreements for all the music in the show were signed and they decided that it was out of their budget to re-license the music and so they hired for like three studio musicians to re-record generic classic rock sounding trats that played through the whole sitcom if you get a DVD of WKRP it's totally different but that's an interesting example these problems do come up because the technology changes even though the agreements are negotiated at different times speaking as from the writer's perspective I'm not from the writer's but anyhow my understanding of the writer's perspective on some of this it may be the highest because in talking with our colleagues at the dramatist guild it's the exploitation of film motion picture rights that those other uses of the new play the new play is going to be the hardest thing to wrestle with here because that's embedded in the writer's agreement there is their future in like a really material way so how that barrier is going to be crossed or penetrated is I think it's going to be hard well in most instances licensing agencies like this only hold the life-saving licensing rights so the mechanical, the audio the video rights, anything like that is still controlled by the writer by him or herself through their agent right so that would probably I don't think it would really alter our licenses all that much those things would get addressed like if there was a dramatist guild agreement and an approved production contract there's a writer that goes with it it's called article 22 and everything else that's not in the APC and the approved production contract is put into that and an artist can agree to it or not agree to it usually the dramatist guild weighs in and says we'll approve this for our members or not but it's a negotiation it's just business so you know a producer that thinks they want to make a video of it or recording of it will attempt to get those rights otherwise most contracts have a reservation of rights that anything other than what's being negotiated for years reserved to the author great I think we have time for a one more question so you and then Adam first I just want to say thank you so much for all the service that you do for us, for the community in all the different ways I really appreciate it I basically just want to ask the overall theme tonight and mainly this week is how important education is educating each other, educating students, future artists what can we people who are currently writing creating intellectual property aside from education which is the most important thing I don't even know if you can answer this but what can we do to continue to be a part of that conversation either with publishers with legislators you know how can how can we continue to advocate and influence that conversation if you have any suggestions so the question is about you know what can the individual artists do if this is an issue that they care about what can the individual artists do or be doing ongoing to you know issue of piracy I'm going to ask Steven to answer that because it's really about artists I believe educating themselves as to what their rights are I think you start with yourself you have that integrity as far as the intellectual property that you create and perhaps that you are accessing and then the next thing that you do is you pass that on to everybody you're working on that show with and then the next show and little by little it spreads in a grassroots way through the theater community and then we all have a lot more respect for the work that we're each of us creating like you and I end up producing a lot of my own stuff or producing for friends and then kind of finally find myself on the other side of the table raising money to pay people or not pay people or asking people to pay things for free which I think we need to stop doing and we need to stop agreeing to to start again. Cool. Adam, you want to take a zone? To go way back to Brian's question about theater being currently analog I think there's a lot of evidence that film productions and film adaptations of shows actually drive people back into the theater I remember when the Chicago movie came out and the play was going on Broadway and people thought it was going to close and that was 10 years ago and I notice a lot of theaters around the country and I have to believe it's because they're assuming that they're going to see that sell really well because of the movie that I had at Christmas The Chicago movie won a bunch of Oscars Sure, which is a bit of a plot. The Phantom movie did not and sales for Phantom rose when the movie came out and I think, and this is what NC Live does too is that they're actually not trying to recreate the play they're trying to create a really good film experience of that play and get people to then go see something live Just so you know, I believe that now I could be wrong but it's not that it's from my perspective is that usually if a movie's coming out the play has about 8 weeks after that movie hits the theaters and has 8 weeks left before it closes because why spend, even if it's an I remember Steel Magnolia is the classic example Mama Mia is still running she's still running years after this movie those bad movies in my opinion I knew you were going to add more things to the movie I'll stand by that but if you can go see a movie with big name movie stars in it for $10 they're suspending $80 to $150 to see a Broadway star that maybe isn't as familiar to you maybe the movie is not the best example but I know that that's part of NC Live's goal and also because it's a national theater and they're have plays going on all the time it may not be that the film is going to be people with that play but it may be people with another one or it may reach people who were never ever going to go to the theater in the first place so they're trying to make a really great movie theater experience for those people so they can see that and experience the work that way and other people are going to go see it what I also think from a stock and amateur standpoint is people see the movie they know there's a play and they say I want to play that how many of us are going to go to the convention I don't know how to give you ass we did I think it's a conventional wisdom because I think it used to be true and I think that the world has changed and I think if you even go back forget about film with the world of Les Mis and Phantom on Broadway in the late 80s and early 90s and with multiple productions of those companies touring the country and what was happening people were seeing those productions in their hometown and coming to New York and what were they going to go see Les Mis or Phantom that they already saw in their hometown I think we're consuming things in a different way now we want to see things multiple times and that's very different than the old days where Wizard of Oz or Sound of Music is going to be on once a year on CBS and I'm going to sit down and watch it that one day because that's all I can get and so we were used to that world once and then maybe at some point in the future I think to Ryan's point the live experience is different and people know that and so if they get interested in the property because of something out there they might then it's like seeing your favorite band live It happened with iTunes I mean there's this idea of fidelity recording iTunes squeezed the big breaks down to manageable round level sizes so you did lose a sense of the original you're listening to Beatles in little tiny earbuds there is a problem there and actually live videos of productions even if they're done relatively poorly in some regard degradation of quality is the main issue I hear the furtive noises of a wine machine so I just want to open it up to last words that anyone might have that they want to throw in I would be remiss before we walk up here my new BFF Laura told me that today is her 25th wedding anniversary what better way to end it I just wanted to thank everyone the conversation continues over there sit with me tight for minutes I have to give some major thank yous out first to Bruce Lazarus they are our executive director and it would work for their passion about these subjects we wouldn't all be here today a mighty village so I just want to give a quick shout out to Brad, to Abby to Ryan, to Chris to Amy without them and their tireless efforts of getting panelists and coming up with ideas we wouldn't all be here so to be fair we are very fortunate we have a lot of lion's share of the work this week and talking to panelists so another round of applause for course to all of our locations many of whom representatives are here, Dramatists, Lark, DramatistGill and Casey McClain back there from Samuel French, Grand, Elizabeth they made it more than being host they were actively involved and one final thank you to HowlRound we're talking like you're there they helped us they have awesome essays up on their site many written by people in this room so go check it out and now we invite you to not only come and enjoy some refreshments over there but check out our script table please take one script one tote bag we want theater to spread make theater happen