Friday, May 04, 2007

Another evil director thwarted

My friend Valerie is producing her own play and engaged a director who gave her a contract - as the producer, she should have given HIM a contract - and the contract included a clause that claimed "property rights." When she told me about it, I immediately told her to have the Dramatists Guild look at the contract. She did and, they took out all that SSDC-trying-for-a-director's-copyright crap and, although the director had tried to play it like it was his way or the highway, he signed it.

NO American playwright should sign ANY director's contract without having it vetted by the DG. The SSDC - Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers - is on a mission to turn the theatre world into a duplicate of the film world, where directors are gods and writers are nothing. And their lawyers were SUCH assholes to us during our trial last year - perhaps they thought they could intimidate us by insulting us in the hall after our court appearances, but they were dead wrong.

The SSDC must be forced to back down every single time they try to steal property rights away from a writer - and the Dramatists Guild is just the organization to do it.