Total War on bushgreen

Despite what I now consider to have been an over-reaction to the suggestion that my plays might be made available online, the much deserved ribbing for said over-reaction by fellow blogger 99seats, I still had concerns as to how playwrights could be expected to make their work available online in such a manner that benefits them as well as the potential audience.

Though it may have appeared as if I had taken an ideological hardline with regards to sharing my work; I have decided to try out bushgreen, a new social networking platform for playwrights set up by London's Bush Theatre.

It's an experiment for me, but interested parties can find me here and perhaps read the latest draft of Total War here.

Yes, I Over-Reacted

My last post, "Free Play Free-For-All", resulted in more than the usual amount of discussion, not just in this blog's comment section, but on the 99Seats blog and on the Dramatists Yahoogroup. And while it is always a joy to spark debate, it became very clear to me that despite the legitimacy of some of the concerns I expressed, was none-the-less over-the-top; that my reaction was out of proportion to what was essentially a faux-pas.

Essentially, the story begins when a friend posted a link to an event announcement for a staged reading of Total War to his Facebook page. This results in a discussion thread between a third party and myself:

[Name Withheld] sounds like a fine play to me, i'm searching the net for its script to read

Ian Thal I'm the author and the script shouldn't posted on the net, at least not in the form that will be presented on October 11th.

[Name Withheld] thank you! i was unable to find it, but will continue to this winter, just in case you post it somewhere. the synopsis is quite interesting and itself well-written.

Ian Thal [Name Withheld], I'm not planning on posting it to an open forum at any point in the foreseeable future. There are a lot of issues involved including protecting my intellectual property rights.

[Name Withheld] of course. i'm sorry to have forgotten that issue. best of luck on your opening night.

At this point in time I was still having the hardest time finding an actor for one of the supporting roles for the reading and enduring some of the stresses of being an artist in this economy. So a simple, unintended faux-pas drew an exaggerated response.

99Seats, though misinterpreted me on a number of counts, gave me a well-earned mocking for my excessiveness. (We have since cleared up most areas of misunderstanding; any other issues of disagreement to be of a friendly nature.)

What set me off was the presumption that my work should be found freely available on-line when clearly, since the event was announced as a staged-reading, it was still a work-in-progress, and then by the follow-up in which my interlocutor, instead of making an attempting to start a dialogue with me and asking for a copy, simply stated the intention to keep looking until the play was found somewhere on-line. That my rights as an author still engaged in development were an afterthought added to my feelings of being treated discourteously.

My reaction to what was most certainly an unintended discourtesy was simply overboard. A far more appropriate response would have been along the lines of what I was to later say in the comments section of my previous post:

If Tony Kushner were staging a reading of his next great play, most would understand that the text of this work-in-progress [would] unlikely to be on the web, at least not with Kushner's approval. However, Kushner is famous (and well he deserves to be) so everyone expects to pay for his work, while I am not famous, so my work is expected to be freely available.

Just to clarify: I have distributed various drafts of Total War to actors, some of whom either were or will be readers for my staged readings, were curious about either participating, or, even were unavailable yet still curious. I've distributed copies to theatres, conferences, workshops, and competitions that were seeking submissions.

It's not that I am opposed to sharing my work online; it's a matter that my thoughts as to when, with whom, and by what methods are still open to my own deliberation and debate with others. This isn't an ideological stance (though it may have come across as one, earlier) but rather a stage in the development of this particular piece.

Free Play Free-For-All

N.B.: 10/3/2009: Since writing this piece, I have decided that it is a bit of an over-reaction, but I keep it here for your entertainment.

As an artist who cannot consistently rely on large institutions to promote his events, I make use of on social media, so without hesitation, I did what I and many other artists and presenters of my acquaintance do: I posted an event listing for the staged reading Total War to Facebook.

As one would hope when one does such a thing, actors and attendees start to invite friends or repost the event listing.

Mark Jaquith, who blogged about some of my other work was kind enough to post my listing to his Facebook account. Which interestingly enough, elicited the following response:

[Name Withheld] sounds like a fine play to me, i'm searching the net for its script to read

Which just struck me as an odd thing for someone to write when clearly the event is a staged reading of a work-in-progress, and anyway, still under copyright. I had posted an earlier draft to a seemingly now defunct website that was designed with the purpose of facilitating contact between playwrights and producers, so I had made the work digitally available in the past for a limited audience,

I responded:

Ian Thal I'm the author and the script shouldn't posted on the net, at least not in the form that will be presented on October 11th.

[Name Withheld] thank you! i was unable to find it, but will continue to this winter, just in case you post it somewhere. the synopsis is quite interesting and itself well-written.

In other words, "I'm looking for a free version of your work-in-progress." This, irked me as I am also a writer, I don't take kindly to people nicking my work. More importantly, I have had my work nicked (blog entries reposted elsewhere without attribution, book reviews quoted or reprinted without attribution or permission, et cetera) but this was the first time somebody had the chutzpah to tell me, "I would like to nick your work, because it sounds really interesting!" This is despite the fact that I am already making the effort to put my work out for a public viewing.

Now, I admit to reading free digital versions of copyrighted works, but due to my sensitivity to the issue, I only do so when the work has been made freely available by author or publisher, or when work for which I would be willing to pay due to its historical importance is no longer commercially available due to ownership disputes between author and publisher, or corporate censorship by the publisher.

I'll also admit that I can't afford to pay to see every play I want to see, so I volunteer as an usher, win promotional tickets, get tickets in exchange for teaching workshops to supplement my meager theatre-going budget-- so even most of my "freebies" are really barters for my service to the community-- and even then, I do not get to see everything I want. I'm not sneaking in through the fire exit, or asking somebody to sneak a video camera in.

Ian Thal [Name Withheld], I'm not planning on posting it to an open forum at any point in the foreseeable future. There are a lot of issues involved including protecting my intellectual property rights.

[Name Withheld] of course. i'm sorry to have forgotten that issue. best of luck on your opening night.

I'm not even sure what conclusions to draw from this exchange. Is this simply how technology has changed how the work of artists is viewed, or is this just the latest permutation of ways in which the labor of artists is devalued by the culture that still consumes product of their labors?

What I really don't understand is the source of hubris to actually tell the artist, "I intend to nick your work the moment I see the opportunity."

Yet, I am of two minds here, Shelly MacAskill's video of my performance of "The Marmalope" was to my benefit. Essentially, it could be called a "bootleg" but at the same time, it shows a performance that requires a prerequisite amount of training to replicate and serves as an advertisement of my skills as a mime and physical comedian, so my first inclination when I met MacAskill socially was to thank her for posting the video. Does the qualitative difference between full text and documentary video overrule the similarities?