Getting the Rights to Stage a Play

A company cannot simply pick a published play and put it on. Unless the text is in the public domain, someone owns the right to authorise a performance, and that right has to be requested, paid for and granted before a single rehearsal is booked. Getting the rights is the quiet paperwork step that sits behind every season announcement, and it decides almost as much about a show as the casting does.

Who actually grants the right to perform a play?

For a modern play or musical, the right usually belongs to a licensing house acting on behalf of the playwright or composer, not to the playwright directly. Most of that paperwork runs through a licensing house, the company that actually owns the right to let someone else perform a play. These firms represent catalogues of thousands of titles, handle the contract, set the fee, and supply the official scripts and scores a company is required to use, rather than a secondhand copy pulled from a shelf.

A company applies by naming the title, the dates, the number of performances and the size of the house. The licensing house checks that the rights are available for that territory and that no other production is already running nearby at the same time, then issues a licence that covers that specific run and nothing beyond it.

Why is Shakespeare free when a recent comedy is not?

For works created since 1978, United States copyright protects a literary work for the life of the author plus seventy years (older works follow different terms set by the Copyright Act), after which the text enters the public domain and anyone may perform it without permission or a fee. Shakespeare's plays, like most work written centuries ago, cleared that term long ago, which is why a company can announce a season of Twelfth Night without writing to anyone first.

A play published in the last few decades is a different case. Its author, or the author's estate, still holds copyright, and performing it without a licence is an infringement, whatever the size of the house or the price of the ticket. That is the real reason a small company's season so often pairs a free classic with a licensed crowd pleaser: one costs nothing but rehearsal time, the other carries a fee from the first reading to closing night.

What does a licence actually cover?

A performance licence is narrow by design. It authorises a stated number of performances, in a stated venue, on stated dates, using the authorised script without unauthorised cuts or added material. It does not transfer ownership of the text, does not cover a recording for sale, and does not automatically extend to an added performance or a transfer to a second venue. A company that wants to film a show for archival use, stream a performance, or add an extra night after the contract is signed usually has to go back to the licensing house and ask again.

Pricing is not a flat number. A licensing house typically sets a fee based on the title's popularity, the size of the venue, the number of performances and sometimes the ticket price, which is part of why a well-known musical can cost a small company many times more to license than an unfamiliar play of similar length. Players, On Stage and Backstage describes the committee that weighs these costs against a season's budget before a title is ever announced, reading scripts and totalling fees at the same table.

What happens if a company skips the licence?

Performing a copyrighted play without a licence is not a formality that gets waived because the house is small or the tickets are free. A rights holder can require a production to close, and a company's reputation with licensing houses matters for every future season: a dispute on one title can complicate the next application. Community and school groups sometimes assume a non-commercial or educational performance is exempt, but that exemption does not exist for a scripted stage play the way it can for some classroom uses of other material. The safer and standard practice is to apply before rehearsals are scheduled, not after.

Where does an adaptation or a translation fit?

A public domain play is not automatically a public domain adaptation. A modern translation of a French or Russian classic, a new verse edition of an old text, or a musical built from a public domain story each carry their own, separate copyright, held by whoever wrote that particular version. A company staging A Doll's House in a specific translator's English, for instance, may still need that translator's or publisher's permission even though Ibsen's original text is long out of copyright. Checking which exact edition a script is drawn from is part of the same homework as checking the play's age.

What a company keeps on file afterward

Once a licence is granted, the paperwork does not disappear when the run closes. What a Company Archive Holds keeps the signed contract alongside the script and the programme, because a future season, a reprint of a programme note, or a dispute years later can all come back to the same document. A licence is a legal record as much as a backstage one, and the companies that keep it are the ones that can answer a question about a past production with a date and a signature rather than a guess.

About Concord Theatricals

Concord Theatricals is a licensing house launched in 2018 by combining several historic firms, including Samuel French, Tams-Witmark and R&H Theatricals; in 2025 it added Broadway Licensing Global, the owner of Dramatists Play Service. It represents the performance rights to a large catalogue of plays and musicals on behalf of their authors. Companies apply through its site for performance licences, order authorised scripts and scores, and find the terms, fees and territory restrictions attached to each title before a season is confirmed.