Take careful note of the quotation marks, because the headline above doesn’t nod to theatre tickets or the wholesale embrace of casual fornication. The reference, sorry to disappoint you, relates instead to the titles of two stage works created in 1926, which as of January 1, 2022 should be entering the public domain.

As a result of changes in copyright law over the years, very little entered the public domain for an extended period which ended in 2019, once again starting the annual roll of works ceasing to be under the control of the estates of those who created them. Last year’s big entry into the field was The Great Gatsby. This year, when it comes to theatre, George Abbott and Philip Dunning’s Broadway and Mae West’s Sex are leading the pack of influential works now free to those who wish to produce, alter or adapt these pieces. 

Obviously what was popular and even topical 95 years ago may not hold up now, but for those whose art may emerge from transforming vintage work, public domain material certainly beats negotiating with attorneys and studios. To be clear, this applies to all copyrighted work, including novels, films and recordings, so the tranche coming available every year is quite vast.

For those who like the saga of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat but find the musical (in its many iterations) a slog for some reason, the novel enters the public domain in 2022 while the musical has at least two years to go. The same is true for Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which appeared as both a novel and, co-authored with John Emerson, a play in 1926, so the adventures of Lorelei Lee are now fair game for new iterations. But keep clear of the musical Blondes, because anything newly created by Loos and her collaborators Joseph Fields, Jule Styne and Leo Robin are protected for over two more decades.

While the play Chicago, by Maurine Dallas Watkins, basis for the Kander and Ebb musical, also launched on Broadway in 1926, its first performance was on December 20, so it’s highly likely that its copyright wasn’t registered until 1927, meaning you can’t take the story for all your own jazz for another year. It’s a good example of why every literary work herein should be triple checked before you have at them: while copyright likely began the same year they premiered, you don’t want to get caught up by an exception, so as with all adapted works, a good legal check is in order.

On stage, Broadway brought plays by writers who were better known for other works, before or after their 1926 contributions. They include The Great God Brown by Eugene O’Neill, The Play’s The Thing by Ferenc Molnar in a version by P.G. Wodehouse (later adapted by Tom Stoppard as Rough Crossing), The Silver Cord by Sidney Howard (who won the Pulitzer for 1925’s They Knew What They Wanted), Saturday’s Children by Maxwell Anderson, The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham, The Road to Rome by Robert E. Sherwood, Daisy Mayme by George Kelly, What Every Woman Knows by J.M. Barrie, and In Abraham’s Bosom by Paul Green.

While the writers getting produced in 1926 were predominantly male and white, it’s worth noting that West, Loos and Watkins led the field of women writers, which also included less remembered authors such as Glady B. Unger, whose Two Girls Wanted ran 324 performances and Margaret Vernon, whose Yellow lasted for 124, in an era when a twelve-week run could be considered a hit. There is markedly little diversity, sad to say, however the Spanish natives Gregorio and Maria Martinez Sierra had a hit with The Cradle Song.

Looking to novels which are now up for grabs, the list includes Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste. Perhaps buried in this recounting, but no doubt in need of particularly careful parsing, especially as UK and US copyright terms vary and there are Disney encumbrances to dodge as well, is A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, who emerged in the Hundred Acre Wood in 1926.

Why promote these old works coming out of copyright and into the public domain at a time when stages (and TV, film radio, podcast and so on) are increasingly making space for new and diverse voices? It’s not to try to elevate these works above what’s new or make any claims for their value today. However, there’s often something to be learned from the past, whether by being faithful or through radical transformation.In recent weeks, since the passing of Stephen Sondheim, we have been reminded of how Oscar Hammerstein II assigned the young artist the task of writing four original musicals as training, including a good play, a bad play and a non-play. Aspiring writers might well look to public domaterial as sources for such work because should they happen to be particularly inspired and successful in their efforts, they could, with little to no fuss, actually get the show(s) produced.

I have yet to see Pinter in the Pinter or Sondheim in the Sondheim. I have, however, seen Ayckbourn in the former and, incongruously, Pee Wee Herman in the latter. For anyone confused, I am referring to the recently renamed Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End and Broadway’s Stephen Sondheim Theatre. I applaud the naming of these venues, and I am equally enthusiastic about the Caryl Churchill Theatre that will open in Surrey next year. They are manifestations of a topic I find myself musing upon: using theatre naming as a means of promoting the awareness of theatrical history.

On the one hand, the name of every Broadway and West End theatre carries history, since the venue name will be associated perpetually with famous productions that played there. However, names are not exactly fixed in stone. While Broadway’s Belasco and New Amsterdam may stretch back to a century ago, the current Helen Hayes Theatre is the second building to honor “the first lady of the American Theatre”; the original (which had two names before Hayes) was torn down some 30 years ago. Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? premiered at the Billy Rose Theatre 50 years ago; today, that same theatre is the David T. Nederlander, named for a member of the family that now owns it.

The point is that theatre names are somewhat fluid, and the rationale behind their naming, past and present, can have a variety of motivations. It was certainly the style, once upon a time, for the impresario who built the theatre to name it after himself, but in New York, there has been an intermittently enlightened approach that has resulted in such venues as the Lunt- Fontanne Theatre (named for the husband and wife acting duo in 1958) and the August Wilson Theatre (renamed in 2005, just after the pioneering African American playwright passed away, the building’s sixth name). Among Broadway’s 40 theatres, two are named for legendary critics, the Brooks Atkinson and the Walter Kerr, and a third for newspaper caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, no small recognition for the fourth estate.

Other theatres are named for more practical reasons: when the not-forprofit Roundabout Theatre Company reclaimed a theatre on 42nd Street, part of the restoration and its ongoing funding was secured through a long term sponsorship that named the new venue the American Airlines Theater. Purists were dismayed, but to my mind, it was not affront, since it reestablished a working theatre where none had been for decades.

But I return to the Wilson, the Lunt-Fontanne, the Sondheim, the Hayes, because to me they are exemplars. Maybe, just maybe, patrons seeing shows in those theatres might take the time to find out about these storied names, both bygone and current. Perhaps programmes or websites can provide not just the history of the theatre, but of its namesake. Could our theatre capitals take the opportunity to make themselves billboards for theatre history with more judicious naming? In New York, what of a George Abbott, a Comden and Green, a Wendy Wasserstein Theatre? And they need not be posthumous. Harold Prince, one of the most influential figures in New York theatre from the 1950s to today, might be thusly honoured (even if he has had, at one time, not one but two theatres named for him in Philadelphia). In London, what of Ayckbourn, Stoppard, or Ralph Richardson?

This is not a decision that can be achieved through public opinion, since the authority rests with the owners of the buildings themselves. But perhaps while theatres retain the truly memorable, essential names, the more generic ones can become theatrical history markers. By way of example, both New York and London have Lyceums that might be better off personalized, if preservation regulations allow it. Since theatre is not a religious rite, why do London and New York both have St James Theatres if he was the patron saint of furriers and chemists?

Some theatres’ historic names have been proven outdated, the figures they were named for more fleeting than expected. Perhaps we must change these pieces of the theatre’s history in order to better promote theatre history and commemorate it for subsequent generations.