Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Standing up to submission fees

The Los Angeles-based SCI-FI play fest was initially charging $10 per submission of one-act plays, and a bunch of us on the "Official Playwrights of Facebook" group gave them shit for days.

And now they've decided to stop charging a submission fee.

Now I can't say for sure that we were the cause of the change of policy - but we did our best.

When enough people give theater organizations shit about submission fees, they will change the policy. I've had other groups do the same thing after I told them that NYCPlaywrights will not run their call for submissions.

If there was no down-side to charging submission fees, what would prevent all theater organizations from doing so? I don't enjoy guilt-tripping and shaming theater organizations, but there doesn't seem to be any alternative.

So there.