If one looks around the website of The Neil Simon Festival, a yearly theatre event held in Cedar City, Utah, there’s a list of donors to the company. On that list are seven entries at the $100+ level. But the list is perhaps some 30 short, because that’s the approximate number of unlisted individuals who sent $150 to the Festival last year.
While the $150 sent by those people isn’t described by the Festival as a donation, it effectively is one for all but a single person. The $150 figure is derived from the submission fee playwrights are asked to provide as their entry fee to the Festival’s New Play Contest, now in its ninth year. While the Festival notes that every submission receives a written evaluation as part of the company’s response, it is not a fee for service. Playwrights are not offered the opportunity to submit and not receive an evaluation.
Richard Bugg, founder and executive producer of the Festival, said in a call with Arts Integrity that the $150 submission fee was new as of last year, markedly increased from their prior figure. He said it has had the effect of decreasing the submissions, from nearly 100 scripts to somewhere in the 30s. The deadline for the 2019 contest is 11:59 pm on February 1, so there is not yet a final count for this year.
Asked about the fee, which is notably high compared to other play competitions and workshop programs, Bugg explained that the fee is waived for any college or university that chooses and submits a single selection, though he said that none had done so. The Festival’s website states:
The entry fee is used in three areas: a) to help defray the cost of travel and lodging for the playwright, b) payment to our contest readers for their professional expertise, and c) contest administration (photocopying, advertising, etc. but not salary).
Bugg specifically said that the fee helps to underwrite payment to Douglas Hill, who reviews most of the scripts and writes the critiques. Bugg said that Hill is, “magnificent in looking at the structure of scripts and making suggestions.” The payment also helps to pay other reviewers engaged by Hill as needed. Bugg said he also reads all of the finalists’ scripts.
Hill also spoke to the effect of the submission fee, in an e-mail response to questions from Arts Integrity. “We have received as many as 120 submissions in some years, and as few as 20 in other years,” he wrote. “Unfortunately since the contest is less than 10 years old, and with the recent changes to the contest, it’s a little difficult to provide you with a good approximate number.
“We use it to some degree to weed out,” said Bugg. “We get a higher degree of script that way.” However, Bugg allowed that perhaps some worthy scripts might not be submitted due to the expense.
The season at The Neil Simon Festival, an independent not-for-profit organization, is short, only three weeks this coming year, with two shows a day five days a week, and with most actors performing in multiple roles akin to classic repertory format. The winner of the new play contest first receives a six-day staged reading in the year in which it is selected, and is then produced, for three performances, during the subsequent season. In 2019, that play will be I Left My Dignity in My Other Purse by Shelley Chester.
Asked whether the Festival was familiar with Dramatists Guild guidelines regarding play festivals and contests, Bugg said that he was not. Ralph Sevush, Executive Director for Business Affairs of the Guild, when informed of the $150 submission fee, provided the following guidance from the Guild’s best practices guidance:
BEST PRACTICE: The organization does not require a submission fee. Furthermore, the organization imposes no other obligation on the author or encumbrance on the work (e.g., ticket sales, participation fees, technical rentals, hiring fees, marketing, or other selling obligations), except for do-it-yourself (“DIY”) productions. The Guild has long disapproved of excessive submission fees, which not only undermine the benefit of any “award” or “royalty,” but also impose financial hardship on the author. Any other authorial obligations should be clearly noted up front; this is particularly true for DIY and similar festivals that require authors to self-produce their works.
Regarding payments to the authors when their winning works are performed, Bugg said that there were none. The playwright receives transportation and housing during both visits. Bugg explained, “There’s no royalties. Just being in the season is reward in our eyes.” Bugg did make clear that other playwrights in the Festival, including the Simon estate, are paid royalties.
The Neil Simon Festival, now in its 17th year, is admittedly a small company, operating on a budget of roughly $300,000 per Bugg. While Hill wrote, “We’re probably best defined as a professional non-Equity company,” that assertion is undermined by a casting notice from the Festival. The notice stipulates availability from June 3 to July 29 in Cedar City and 4-5 weeks of subsequent performance in Park City and Ivins, also in Utah. Regarding compensation, the website says only that, “Housing is provided along with a modest stipend.” Bugg noted that while he and several of the other leaders of the company are members of Actors Equity and do perform in the Festival, “We don’t do contracts for ourselves.”
That the Neil Simon Festival operates a new play contest in which playwrights are asked to pay a fee far above the typical competition, that the selected playwright receives no royalty for their work being presented to a paying public, and that actors are essentially volunteering for an entire summer’s engagement stand as three red flags about the company. These simply are not prevailing industry standards. Professionals are paid for their work.
That the company leadership – Bugg, Hill, and artistic director Peter Sham – all teach at the university level (Bugg and Sham at Southern Utah University and Hill at University of Nevada Las Vegas) also raises questions about the professional standards they are imparting to their students, separate from their Neil Simon duties. The encouragement to “work” for little or no pay runs contrary to the practices and expectations that should be instilled in aspiring artists. The suggestion that playwrights of new plays should be rewarded simply by virtue of being produced undermines the perceived value of authors’ creations. Actors shouldn’t be grateful for a place to sleep, petty cash, and stage time. High submission fees emphasize economic disparity among artists, making it possible only for those of means to enter competitions that require a significant outlay (very possibly diminishing the range and caliber of submissions and the program in the process).
When the clock strikes midnight on February 2, the Neil Simon Festival’s Play Contest entry period will close. But hopefully with some serious thinking resulting from outside scrutiny, the leadership of the company will rethink the economic model under which they function and the messages they communicate through their operating model. Perhaps they can use it to leverage more funding, locally or nationally. Because however great the experience may be for those involved, exorbitant fees for contest entrants and free labor by actors don’t add up a professional experience. It ends up costing the artists to be involved, even as audiences pay in order to see that work. And that’s no laughing matter.
