But that’s not the playwright’s problem. His conditions are that, if you want to perform his play, you need people of color to play the parts. Simple, really. If you can’t meet the conditions, you don’t get to perform the play.
In fact, he did apparently have the sense to know that the school couldn’t cast the proper actors, because he allowed them to use the play for teaching purposes, but when he found out that they intended to perform it for a public audience, he made clear that they could not do this unless they met his conditions regarding the ethnicity of the actors.
Nowhere in this whole situation—at least, in terms of the information that we have—was the playwright anything other than honest about his rules and conditions. Nowhere did he say, “Yes, you can perform my play however you like,” and then go back on his word. Indeed, he was the one trying to stay on top of the situation so that there would be no misunderstandings, but the director seems to have been very poor at communicating, either intentionally or due to being busy.
Made me think of the world-wide production of “Les Miserables”, played by artists in their respective localities. The Japanese Valjean is now hosting “Iron Chef.” He was funny.
I don’t know how you can say that. It’s the definition of his problem.
Or they didn’t take the racial nonsense seriously. I don’t really see where the writer had much say in the matter if they did the play. What can he do, sue them? It would be difficult to prove any kind of monetary or professional harm.
He thought they were just doing it class - not a real performance. And he was happy for them to do it however they liked, in that context.
Playwrights are more at risk than other artistic creators, of having people mess with their work and do stuff with it that they don’t want - because the very process of performing it before an audience necessarily involves other people with their own ideas. That’s why the rules for performing someone’s play specifically stipulate that you get their permission first, and understand and follow any conditions that they may have.
He actually does have the right to stipulate actors’ ethnicities. In fact, he has the right to stipulate that all the actors be under five foot and wear pink neon top hats if he likes - we may mock him for that choice, but he does, legally, have that right.
And let me guess, you just happen to be the one who knows exactly what the core ideas and ideals of libertarianism are?
There are two separate questions here, libertarian views of what government should do, and libertarian views of social outcomes. Obviously, we don’t think government should be involved in forcing anyone to put on a play with or without certain actors. The director of a play can do whatever stupid things he wants, including rejecting actors because of their race, and it’s none of the government’s business. But since nobody is suggesting that the government be involved in that way, it’s beside the point.
In the social non-government realm, libertarians believe it’s best when members of all races have the freedom to do what they want and are not blocked because of their race, either due to government law or social censure. Hence demands for race-based restrictions like this, even if they’re not demands for government action, are definitely against libertarian ideals.
That said, focusing on the fact that I used the word “libertarian” seems to be a way of ignoring the main point, that nobody should be discriminated against because of their race.
He’d probably start with a cease-and-desist letter, but then, yes, proceed to sue them if they did not instantly comply. Have their production shut down. Have them pay his legal costs.
It’s certainly happened before. David Mamet has had two different productions shut down for changing the gender of characters in his plays.
Do you understand how copyright law works in the United States?
The playwright holds copyright in the play that he has written. In order to perform the play, a theater group must get permission from the playwright, and often this permission will involve a contract specifying stuff like: what (if any) payment must be made to the playwright; how long the play is allowed to run for; and any other conditions that the playwright requires (such as, in this case, the ethnicity of the performers).
If you perform the play without the playwright’s permission, you have violated his copyright. He can then sue you. If he has registered the play with the US Copyright Office (and believe me, any playwright well-known enough to have his or her work performed by a theater has done this), then you can be sued and find yourself having to pay up to $150,000. And if the copyright has been registered in a timely fashion, such an award does NOT require demonstrating actual monetary or professional harm.
Ah, yes. I forgot there wasn’t even a contract on this. In the Mamet cases, there was a contract, he had already been paid, and he still got to shut them down for unauthorized changes.
Oh, you bohemian outlaw conservatives with your free-spirited disdain for stuffy old legal contracts and intellectual property rights!
Actually, the entertainment industry as a whole takes a fairly dim view of the “just sign the contract and then disregard it” approach to production licensing. Here, for example, is what happened to a couple of local theater companies that decided to stage the musical Grease a few years ago with an all-female cast:
I don’t claim to be the one and only authority, by any means, and i am sure that there are plenty of people who know more about the it than me.
Still, my field of study and my field of work is the intellectual history of the United States, in which classical liberal and libertarian thought play an important role. I am quite familiar with works in the classical liberal and libertarian tradition, dating back to the Enlightenment, and originating both in Europe and in the United States. I am particularly familiar with the post-WWII strain of American libertarianism that has its roots in the works of authors such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, as well as well as objectivists like Ayn Rand. I have read extensively on the emergence of libertarian thought in American politics, particularly following the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, and i am familiar with the work of modern Americans libertarian publications and organizations such as Reason magazine and the Cato Institute.
During my time in graduate school, i received two fellowships from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, an organization devoted to the study and the promotion of classical liberal and libertarian thought. I also attended quite a few seminars and conferences held by this organization, both during and after grad school. I’m still on their mailing list.
I’ll leave it to you to determine whether that qualifies me to speak on the issue.
And yet, conveniently enough for you, nowhere in this paragraph is any mention of the fact that the playwright in this case has the right—both moral and legal—to control the conditions under which his work is performed. This constitutes his fundamental property right in the work, and is independent of whether or not you consider him a racist. And property rights are central to just about any understanding of libertarian thought.
I’m well aware that most libertarians are not racists, and that most libertarians probably do, in fact, want people of all races to share in similar freedoms without regard to skin color. But libertarians have also, on some occasions, made clear that people have the right to be racists, and even to treat people differently on the basis of their skin color, as long as they don’t infringe on the individual rights of others.
Some libertarians have held property rights to be so important that they believe any effort to compel equal treatment based on race to be an infringement of liberty. Barry Goldwater himself was concerned that the public accommodations and the employment sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would undermine individual freedom in the United States. That is, he opposed the sections of the Act (Sections II and VII) that required people to treat minorities equally in hotels, inns, restaurants, etc., etc., and in employment situations. I don’t think that Barry Goldwater was a racist—he was happy with the other sections of the Civil Rights Act, and he made his support for racial equality quite clear in many ways—but he was expressing a view of the primacy of property rights that is very important to libertarian thought.
I believe this too, but in assessing these things, i also like to have some sense of historical perspective. As Leaper said, on the previous page of the thread:
This is exactly how i feel.
In an ideal world, people of all races should treat people of all other races completely equally. In an ideal world, there would be no affirmative action, there would be no playwrights demanding that people of color be cast in their plays to the exclusion of white actors, and it would be equally unacceptable for black people and white people to use the word nigger.
But that ideal world would be a world bereft of history, and that is not the world we live in. We live in a world of historical inequities, many of which have not (despite the bleating of some conservatives) been adequately corrected or addressed. In such a world, we need to recognize that it’s not the same thing for a white person and a black person to call a black person a nigger. In such a world, we need to recognize that affirmative action can still play a useful role in correcting the consequences of past prejudices and discrimination. And in such a world, we need to have the intellectual and moral courage to recognize that a few playwrights calling for people of color to fill a few roles in a few minor plays does not constitute some gross example of racial prejudice. It simply makes an effort to carve out a small niche for people of color in a world of entertainment where, even in the twenty-first century, the majority of significant and prominent and respected roles still tend to go to white people.
Actually, it doesn’t really mean that at all, even though compensation is often involved.
As the name suggests, it means that you control the rights to the copying of your work, which means, in the case of a play, to the performance of it in public.
Such rights are generally assigned through contracts or agreements. The playwright’s own Facebook post on the issue, linked by Aspidistra earlier in this thread, says:
Without an agreement, the theater did not have the right to perform the play. It is not simply about compensation. You cannot force the owner of copyright to take money from you in exchange for the right to use his or her work.
I admit that, in this rather fast-moving thread, i might have missed it, but i don’t recall having seen any evidence for the bolded and underlined statement.
What IS he going to do? I don’t know. You would have to ask him that.
What COULD he do? As i made quite clear in an earlier post, he could sue them for copyright violation and, if the play has been registered with the US Copyright Office, he could win substantial financial damages, well above any actual monetary losses. I’ve already spelled out for you how the law works, and provided a link. I’m not sure what other evidence you want.
I am well aware that people thumb their noses at copyright law all the time, and often do it without any consequences. My argument here has never been “There’s no way that the theater will get away with it.” I’m perfectly cognizant of the fact that they might get away with it if they choose to put on the play without his permission. My point was simply to note that he has property rights in the play, that the law recognizes his right to control the circumstances of its performance, and that the law provides remedies if someone violates his rights.
By the way, you must have missed it in my previous post when i said that i wasn’t aware that he had been paid. Let me ask you straight out: do you have any evidence for that assertion?
It seems to be generally understood that, yes, Clarion did send a payment (but no completed licensing application) to his agent, including by pro-Suh sources such as this rather excellent one:
As you note, and as that link notes, it doesn’t make a difference. Sending the check does not absolve the theater of the obligation to get a signed agreement, and follow the terms of that agreement.
That is precisely why i said, in my earlier post, “You cannot force the owner of copyright to take money from you in exchange for the right to use his or her work.” Simply sending money does not provide the theater with the authority to do whatever they want with the play. It is the agreement itself that grants the right to copy, and there was no agreement.
Oh, you bohemian outlaw conservatives with your free-spirited disdain for stuffy old legal contracts and intellectual property rights!