The Artful Jurist

While at a theater conference recently, someone came up to me with a legal question: How would this person go about getting the rights to produce a published play? Well, simple. Just contact the publisher and find out what their conditions and fees are for securing production rights.

Then came the second question: Would there be any problem if this producer wants to cast all the women's roles with men in drag. Well, again, it seems like there's no real issue here. Casting a play has always been the prerogative of the producer/director. And lots of times the casting choices don't necessarily follow the pre-conceived notion of the playwright. By now I'd suspect most if not all of us have seem actors in roles for which they aren't the traditional choice (e.g., gender switching, race switching). So I didn't foresee a problem for this producer.

But then I got to thinking...because play performance contracts typically contain a clause that states there can be no changes to the script without the author's permission, could an author legally object to gender switching or other casting choices that materially alter the content of the play? If the author says the character is a woman, is it someone else's option to turn the character into a man? Or into an animal? Or into a talking tree?

My guess is, it'd be a tough case for a playwright to make. And I've never heard of such a legal issue being fought. But it's a curious notion to ponder.