Friday, August 29, 2014

Normal blogging will resume

Finally got my laptop back. Wow, 50% of my life was basically on hold - playscripts, NYCPlaywrights postings, and of course this blog were neglected while my baby was away with the Apple Genii.

I have so much work to catch up on it will be a little while before I can get to those three rants I promised last week. And they have to get in line after my response to Edward Einhorn.

Einhorn, as readers of this blog may know, sued me for producing my own play in 2005, on the basis of his fraudulent "blocking and choreography" script which was pronounced invalid, although not until 2011, by the US Copyright Office.

I am a member of a Facebook playwrights discussion group and during a conversation about directors and playwrights I mentioned I had been sued and under what circumstances. People were naturally curious and asked for details so of course I gave them, including a link to the article I wrote for the Dramatists Guild about the case.

A week or so later Einhorn actually had the nerve to come around and complain that I would dare discuss this issue of vital importance to playwrights on a playwrights discussion board. My laptop had just died, and I retorted to Einhorn's long complaint as best I could typing with my thumb on my iPhone, but I never did a thorough point-by-point debunking of his claims.

On re-reading Einhorn's comments just now, one thing that strikes me as incredibly appalling is Einhorn's insistence that this is merely some personal dispute between us. As if he and his brother did not conspire to completely alter the creative and legal world of theater to the detriment of playwrights. I didn't raise the issue on the playwrights discussion group because I have issues with Einhorn personally - although I do think he's a clueless trustfunditarian who has lived in a bubble of wealth his entire life and so can shamelessly proclaim, as he did - and entered it into the court record to boot - that actors don't really need to be paid because they perform for "the glory" of being on stage.

And in response to Einhorn's self-pity over having to be reminded occasionally that he tried and failed to stake a claim in my play forever because he had once directed it, I admit I advised him to go and recover on his 14-carat yacht. This is an allusion to the song "Money" from CABARET.

In any case, rich people running NYC theater is hardly a novel or interesting concept, and exploiting actors is so unremarkable the Flea Theater does it on a massive scale. And few people care about my personal contempt for Edward Einhorn - the important issue is his belief that directors deserve a copyright for their stage directions, which would destroy the theatre for playwrights.

More soon...