For community theaters, schools, churches and nonprofit organizations
Licensing costs are easy to find and easy to misread. The script fee is almost never the whole number, and the parts people miss are the parts that ruin a budget.
The script fee
A one-time charge for the right to use the text, usually somewhere between $50 and a few hundred dollars for a full-length play from an independent author. Larger houses may bundle it into a per-copy price for scripts you must buy rather than print.
Ask whether you may print your own copies. If you must buy 20 scripts at $12, that is $240 nobody budgeted.
Performance royalties
Charged per performance, and this is the number that scales. Anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars a night depending on the title and the size of the theater.
Three things to establish in writing:
- Does a preview or a student matinee count as a performance?
- When is payment due, and what happens if you cancel?
- If you hold the run over, what do the extra nights cost?
Most licensors want royalties in full before opening night. That is normal practice rather than anyone being difficult, and it exists because there is no leverage after a show has been performed.
Music can break your budget
None of this means avoiding musicals or plays with music. Music rights are complicated, but some shows have already done that work: the licensor has considered the extra fees and solved the problem before you ever see the script. Those are the ones worth finding.
If a play contains songs, you may need three separate things, and they come from three places.
Performance rights for the songs. If your venue holds an ASCAP or BMI license, this is often already covered. Check rather than assume, and check that the license covers a ticketed event rather than only background music.
The recordings you perform to. Backing tracks are licensed separately, frequently per performance, commonly somewhere between $25 and $75 a night. This is the line most first-time producers have never heard of.
Arrangements. If someone arranged a song specifically for the show, that arrangement has its own owner.
Ask the licensor to list every music payment you will owe and to whom. A clear answer takes one email. An unclear answer is a warning.
Everything else
The costs that appear after the exciting part is decided:
- Venue. Free through $5,000. Ask what is included and what is extra, especially staffing.
- Sound. Equipment comes with a real theater, and its own staff run it. Ask what that staffing costs, because it is quoted with the room. A room whose sound cannot carry the show is the wrong room.
- Printing. Programs, posters, tickets. $200 to $600.
- Costumes and set. Often near $0 if you borrow, which most community groups can.
- Insurance. Your organization may already carry it. Confirm it covers a public performance.
A realistic total
A modestly staged full-length play, three performances, in a venue with working sound:
Script fee $100. Royalties $450 to $900, at the $150 to $300 a performance most community theaters expect to pay. Backing tracks $90. Printing $400. Costumes and set $200. Total, roughly $1,250 to $1,700.
The same show with hired sound lands nearer $2,500. Against 900 tickets at $20, both are comfortable. Against 150 tickets, only one of them is.
The question that saves the most trouble
Ask any licensor: what will this cost me in total, per performance, including everything I will owe anyone else?
You are asking for one number. Someone who has thought about their licensees can give it to you. Someone who cannot has left the arithmetic for you to discover in November.
About this guide
Written by Curtain & Cause. We write original plays for community theaters and work with the nonprofit organizations staging them as fundraisers. Christmas on the Dial is an original full-length play staged as a live 1950s radio broadcast, with the audience as the studio audience.
Questions about any of the above are welcome, whether or not you are looking at this show. booking@curtainandcause.com
License the show · Book it as a fundraiser · Questions and answers
