Charles Mee, playwright
James and I attended the Rhizome Blogging and the Arts event tonight. During the discussion, Lisa from CultureKitchen mentioned the concern about intellectual property and just letting art or writing be out there that scares so many artists and writers. I was reminded of the wonderful and generous playwright Charles Mee. His website, called the making project, has the complete texts of his plays. If you wish to perform them as written, or essentially as written, you have to get permission as they are copyrighted. Otherwise, if you want to use elements of them in your own work, they are free. To quote from the site:
Please feel free to take the plays from this website and use them as a resource for your own work: cut them up, rearrange them, rewrite them, throw things out, put things in, do whatever you like with themdon't just make a few cuts or rewrite a few passages, but pillage the plays and build your own entirely new piece out of the ruinsand then, please, put your own name to the work that results.
But, if you would like to perform the plays essentially or substantially as I have composed them, they are protected by copyright in the versions you read here, and you need to clear performance rights with...
James and I saw him at Wallsé when we were there with friends for one of the Monday night wine dinners (a bargain I might add). We were probably the only people in the place excited to see him. We didn't react as strongly to seeing Kristen Johnson at the next table...
If you prefer to read his plays via a real book, I recommend History Plays.
P.S. I'm going to turn comments back on for everything but political posts. Those attract too many right-wing idiots finding people to argue with via Google.
