Yes, they also have shows which the students write and direct themselves.
I honestly had no idea that high schools paid licensing fees, especially such large ones, for the shows they put on. I figured the ticket sales paid for the costumes, the ads paid for the programs, etc.
BTW, I’d be pretty ticked off if you sold my email address. I’d create 20 new ones to give them before selling out my friends, family and neighbors.
StG
Yes, while the school orchestra can buy the sheet music for a Beethoven piece and that’s their only cost, Broadway musicals are different as they’re more recent and require various rights fees to perform.
I highly doubt any school is going to encourage plagiarism.
Well, I guess “High School Principal” is one more job I can scratch off my list of being qualified for.
Crazily enough, if a play is not in the public domain, you generally have to pay the rightsholder for permission to use it.
That was amazingly rude. You didn’t agree with it, and didn’t want to subject your friends to it, but you participated in it anyway by using others’ addresses? How about refusing to participate???
I wish. I’ve sat in town meeting where the school board budget people have pared the budget down to the essentials and still it doesn’t pass and they are forced to go back and cut more. People without kids are probably saying, if it’s not enough, let them do other fundraising!
I disagree with both the fundraising method, and with betraying email friends. I’m also shocked at the high price for play performance rights — more than the high school will ever get in ticket revenues. If such high prices are normal, why not just put on Shakespeare or something in public domain?
But I guess begging from strangers on the Internet is normal now. I have a Friend of a Facebook Friend who’s obviously affluent, continuing to take frequent holidays in the Caribbean, yet is using some Help_Me_I’m_a_Beggar.Com to pay for her medical expenses. Does that seem right?
$42K? That’s insane. I would seriously call for an audit and investigation into the Drama Department. To give you an example “The Wizard of Oz” is a $50 - $35 play, meaning for an amateur group and a theater seating under 400, the royalty payments are $50 for the first performance and $35 for each subsequent performance.
I always stayed away from those fundraisers and never encouraged my kid to participate in them. These fundraising companies are getting rich from schools by making some slick brochures selling way overpriced merchandise. Now the fundraising companies don’t even want to make the slick brochures, they just want to spam. Giving them the email addresses of your family and friends is wrong IMO.
And something is seriously out of control if a school play is costing $42,000. They need to lower some expectations.
Footloose doesn’t look like a particularly recent musical. Is it touring anywhere? I know they jack the rates up when a musical is touring nationally so potential ticketbuyers aren’t influenced by getting cheaper seats at a community theater or high school production.
Yes, this seriously out of the normal price range.
Footloose is a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, so probably more expensive than most straight plays. But not 1,000 times more expensive!
I remember (decades ago) that performing rights were basically free if you bought 20-30 copies of the script. This was for many of the old classics, often with playwrights who were long dead. But even more recent plays, like The Laramie Project – that’s $100/performance.
Have they actually signed a contract for these performance rights yet? Even so, it should contain an opt-out clause, with only a nominal penalty fee.
Well I was slightly wrong. The cost of Footloose is $34,000 not $42,000. But still expensive. Add in the cost of sets, costumes and all it will top $40,000 easily.
Last year they rented one of those trapeze, hidden wire things so performers could “fly”. Another school did “Monty Pythons Quest for the Holy Grail” and that show included the special costumes needed. Otherwise this school has their own costume department. When I was in school we all had to rent ours.
I think the point is they are committed to doing well known musicals. Maybe partly so the kids who truly want to go into acting can have say “Dorothy” from “Wizard of Oz” on their resume.
But yes, high school theater departments and their budgets are approaching or exceeded those of some smaller professional theaters. HEREis an article on the subject.
Remember, this isn’t the era where the English teacher or some volunteer did the school play. Today its a big thing.
My daughter’s team did a similar thing, but old school with snail mail addresses that each athlete was required to provide (20). They had to sign each template letter with their own signature, then they were dumped into the mail.
And, no, we could not decline participation, as her going to team events was at risk for not complying.
I became irritated with this annual mail campaign, as the same people were hit each time, and we had no way of knowing who contributed, and if/how much. So we were not able to thank any of the donors we provided. This was the team’s fault.
Also, there were people on the list I provided that I would rather not have asked more than once, but the team used the same addresses as long as my kid was on the team.
I agree the email thing is a bit worse, but I am sure the OP was not given the option to bow out.
This is stupid. The name of the part you got in a high school play could not possibly make a difference for the success or failure of a professional actor. Can you imagine the casting agent that gives a shit?
Spending that much money on something like this is terribly negligent. Guilting parents into harvesting addresses to be spammed for it is horrible.
They’re losing $10k+ on each show, but they’ll make it up in volume.
I’m internally preparing myself to just make up a bunch of addresses should this come up with my kid.
That bolded part means you now have a very nice lawsuit against the coach, the school and the district. That kind of shit violates so many Ed Code sections it’s ridiculous. California has laws against that stuff.
I get the sarcasm, but I assume the idea is that the school recognizes that the theater department’s performances aren’t necessarily going to break even, but instead require some amount of subsidy. Does the high school football team break even? What about, say, the girl’s volleyball team?
I wish that were the case, as we are familiar with that, but the team was not associated with the school or the district, and is a non-profit. So, they could do what they want.
iamthewalrus(:3=, I did consider your approach, but abandoned it since fake addresses would mean returned mail to the club, and if 20 of those showed-up for my daughter, it would be easy to connect the dots, and as per the above, there would be consequences for that hi-jinx.
That’s a fair response, and obviously school extracurriculars don’t have to be money makers.
But tens of thousands of dollars for the rights to perform a show is unreasonable.
If the football team were spending $10k a year because they licensed their team name from an NFL team, that would be equally stupid and wasteful.
I agree that $34,000 just for the performance rights is way too much, given that the OP says the school normally spends $4,000 to $10,000.
Well sports are a different matter.
On football, most high school programs break even between ticket sales and booster support. Some even make a pretty good profit because they often have 1,000 or more people at a game. 10,000 isn’t unheard of in Texas. With that many fans you have ticket sales, concessions, advertising revenue, licensed product sales, heck some HS stadiums even have corporate box seats.
Now remember though football is more expansive where say just a helmet cost $100 and teams have numerous coaches. Volleyball is cheaper. Often just one coach and equipment is cheaper. I’d guess school support and fundraisers bring up the balance.
Getting back to music and theater, what I’m seeing is they are going the way of sports teams and have their own boosters and fundraising. This is why as the above article shows, a theater department might well run over $100,000 a year now. And when you think about it, a musical can have 75 kids in cast and crew which rivals the sports teams.