The View from Backstage: You're Doing Theater Wrong

I just received an audition notice for a theater that plans to charge each actor $75 for the privilege of being in the show and helping the theater to make money. This isn't for camp, mind you: It's for a show.

This marvelous play has no licensing fees associated with it.

No. Just, no. There are other ways to stay in the black. There are grants, there are raffles and 50/50s, there are ads and sponsors, there are concessions, there are season ticket holders, and there are patrons who gladly will donate money if asked, to keep alive the community theater that they enjoy. Use those instead.

If that's not enough, cut your expenses. There is no need to do the biggest shows from Broadway history. There are thousands of quality dramatic works that have no licensing fees attached because they are in the public domain. Do a smaller work, and your theater will stand out from the herd. Everyone else is doing shows by Aaron Sorkin, Neil Simon and Stephen Sondheim. Be the brave theater to stage Eugene O'Neill, Christopher Marlowe, August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Susan Glaspell or Oscar Wilde. Give your show a contemporary setting, and you won't even need to buy costumes.

Actors already easily are volunteering around 50 to 60 hours of their time from their evenings and weekends, per show. This is time they could spend at home with their families, at jobs making money, being with friends, or doing other things they love. And that's in addition to the time they spend memorizing and running lines.

I'm on the board of a community theater myself. I know how difficult it is to stay in the black, and what an earthquake it can be to have a bad season. Unless you're planning to divide the profits with them, you don't squeeze your actors for their money. That's like talking smack to them during the run. It's unprofessional and it's just bad karma.

I'm not going to audition for anything this theater does, and we're not going to promote any more of their shows via this blog either. There are some things you just can't support.