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EVERYONE'S A WRITER


The Spring 2004 issue of "Playmarket News" is titled "Author! Author?" and contains a feature about authorship/ownership of plays.  With "devising" being an increasingly common method of creating theatre, more and more actors and directors are wanting to claim co-writing credits.

Playmarket's Script Developer, Mark Amery, asked a few writers to contribute their opinion.  He offered a number of questions to kick things off, among which were:

  • When do actors, director and designers become writers, and should be co-credited as such?
  • Is 'written by ... in collaboration with ...' a viable credit, and when? When and how should this impact on the royalty share?
  • When a playwright uses an initial devising process, what sort of credit should devisors gain?
We were asked to keep it to 500 words.  I did it in 457.  Count 'em.

I'd like to answer one question.   "When do actors, directors and designers become writers, and should be co-credited as such?"   My short answer is, "When they write."   That is, when they closet themselves away, with or without source material, and emerge days, weeks, or months later with pages of dialogue and stage directions which constitute the script for a play.   This is not the only way to create a piece of theatre, but it is the only way to write a script.   If two or more people share this task, the task of actually writing words on the page, then they are "co-writers."   Nobody else is.

Generating source material is not writing.   Improvising dialogue; thinking up ideas; exploring physicality; devising scenes with your character to give them history, depth and dimension - all good and difficult things to do, but none of them is writing.   Once this source material has been amassed, the hard work of writing begins, and I would assert that anyone who thinks it's now a downhill coast to a finished, workable script, has never written a finished, workable script.

For a writer whose script is wholly adapted from material provided by others, the correct credit should be "Written by ...  adapted from material provided by ..."  in much the same way you'd credit the author of a book which you'd adapted into a script.   As far as splitting royalties goes, there's one golden rule: sort it out before you start.

Here's a whimsical scenario.   I made it up, so add salt to taste.   If you are writing a script based on improvisation, hide a tape recorder in your pocket as the actors make up ten minutes, say, of convoluted, repetitive, directionless dialogue, with the usual nuggets of real gold.   Later at home transcribe it word for word.   Take the resulting ten pages back to your actors the next morning.   They will read it, there will be an embarrassed silence, and they will look at you as if you are the worst writer in the world.   And they'll be right.

Or ...  bring all your craft to bear on that recording.   Spend a few hours refining the material down to it's essence, to a beautifully formed ninety-second scene without a single wasted or misplaced word; which has a beginning, middle and end; which supports the larger theme of the play; which progresses the narrative; which reveals a little more about the characters; and which leaves you burning to see what happens next.   In other words, write it.   Take the resulting page and a half back to your actors the next morning.   They will read it.   Then they will beam at you and say, "Wow, did you have a tape recorder hidden in your pocket?"



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