Corporate Fees Crushing Youth Theater Groups

There is a completely ridiculous phenomenon caused by greed that is affecting children and teens in our area and around the world. I am talking about the obscenely high prices that royalty companies are charging non-profit youth theater organizations and high schools around the world. Producers must literally pay thousands of dollars just for the intellectual property of a show. These high fees might be slightly more reasonable if shows ran for more than two weekends.
There is no way to avoid paying too much for royalties, but there are some pretty degrading ways to help pay for them. Youth Musical Theater Company (YMTC) puts on professionally developed shows throughout the season. The tragic element to this is the fact that the more popular and recent a show is, the more expensive the rights are. This makes it impossible for youth community theater to do recent hits like Wicked, and Rent, and makes it extremely difficult to put on classics like Fiddler on the Roof, and Les Miserables. For YMTC, ticket sales and tuition does not nearly cover producing a show; they must beg for money however they can. They have nearly as many benefits year round as they do shows, after every show they have embarrassing curtain speeches asking for money, which are painful to sit through.
The lowest YMTC has ever sunk, however, was after opening night for Fiddler, when they told me to go in the lobby and literally beg for money, because I played the beggar in the show. It was one of the most embarrassing and infuriating experiences of my life. I’m not blaming YMTC entirely for that ordeal, and they did not do it again, but I am blaming Musical Theater International (MTI) for making them feel that they had to resort to such absurdities.
Stage Door Conservatory (SDC) is a youth theater camp that faces the same dilemma as YMTC. Tuition and ticket sales are about the same for the two but SDC doesn’t beg for money nearly as much as YMTC. What they do differently is put on significantly worse and more outdated shows, such as 42nd Street and Anything Goes.
For a while, those were the only legal ways to dilute the cost of the rights to a show. But recently, an alternative has emerged and will hopefully start a new trend that gives MTI the big heave-hoe completely. I am, of course, talking about original shows. This spring BHS had its first-ever student-written play, Double Digits. Digits was wildly successful, and BHS didn’t have to pay a cent for the script. It seems the trend has already caught on - YMTC’s summer show will be Mothers of Ludlow, an original piece.
I can only shake my head and fist at the terrible greed of companies who charge such exorbitant fees of nonprofit youth programs, and hope that youth theater organizations will choose to produce more original shows in the future.
 

Photos:

• Les Miserables 1.jpg
• LM- IMG_7589.jpg