Playwrights lock horns with theatre companies as arts sector organises for better pay

High-stakes negotiations are under way between state theatre companies and the peak body representing 400 Australian playwrights over pay and entitlements in a rare case of collective action in the arts sector.

COVID shutdowns and financial crises plaguing theatre companies have brought the issue to a head, with the incomes and savings of many playwrights having all but dried up over the past two years.

Playwright Justin Fleming: commissions came to a dead stop after the pandemic lockdowns. Credit: Kate Geraghty

One acclaimed playwright and librettist, who brought the story of Brett Whiteley to the stage of the Sydney Opera House, is yet to receive an income from his works over the past 18 months.

Justin Fleming collaborated with director and choreographer Graeme Murphy on an update of the popular The Merry Widow, but all other commissions came to a “dead stop” when COVID shut stages in 2020. He has received the occasional cheque for royalties but “no advances, no income”.

“Nothing since last January, nothing this year, so my savings are seriously depleted.”

The Australian Writers’ Guild is seeking a rollover of a 2016 Theatre Industry Agreement – setting out minimum payments for playwrights – that lapsed after pandemic-led lockdowns. Companies say they are using a “modified agreement” that does not alter commission fees or royalties paid to playwrights.

COVID-19 exposed theatre’s financial vulnerabilities, burdening companies with deficits, and forcing the cancellation of shows and tours. For the creators of Australian stories, it underlined their lack of enforceable, minimum conditions.

Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House in 2019. Credit: Janie Barrett

Playwrights say the theatre companies are unwilling to treat their last agreement, which expired in 2020, as a “floor” from which to negotiate and are instead offering contracts that disadvantage them. “We understand theatres struggled enormously through COVID, but playwrights – who didn’t receive any support payments, where theatres did – shouldn’t be paying for that,” Claire Pullen of the Australian Writers’ Guild says.

The major sticking point is the companies’ request that they be paid a 10 per cent share of the purchase price and net profits where a stage work is on-sold for a feature film or television production, five years from the premiere.

In effect, this means a playwright whose work is picked up for future production has to pay more of their income from that production to the theatre where their work was first shown, Pullen says.

Theatre companies pursuing changes to 2016 industry standards are the Queensland Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir St Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, State Theatre Company South Australia and the Black Swan State Theatre Company.

The group, called CAST, says a licensing period of one year is insufficient time to organise a tour or future production. Writers benefit from such tours through their royalty payments, and it is proposing to extend the period to better fit Australia’s theatre programming cycles.

If the writer has the possibility of future production by a different company and asks for the licence to be released, theatre companies said no request will be unreasonably denied. The playwright can also argue for the royalty to be reduced in good faith, if it puts a project at risk.

“The CAST companies are a group of non-profit theatre companies with a remit and commitment to presenting Australian stories and supporting writers to develop new work,” a spokesperson says. “The proposed amendments to the Theatre Industry Agreement have been designed to allow more resources and opportunities to support Australian playwrights, at no cost to the writers. The amendments do not impact the fees or royalties paid to writers.”

CAST has also made a claim for an increase in the original producer royalty, or share of gross box office receipts paid to the producer who originally commissioned the play. This is to rise from 1 to 2 per cent.

The dispute comes as professional playwrights continue to report catastrophic losses in average incomes, falling from between $15,000 and $40,000 to as little as $7500.

Opera Australia’s Merry Widow was the last commission of Justin Fleming’s to make the stage.Credit: Steven Siewert

Fleming has been pursuing new writing projects. “As you can see, I have not been idle, just unpaid,” he says, casting a look to a table of manuscripts.

The past two years had been marked by a lack of commissions and licensing, the source of most of his income. Fleming’s play Doris Fitton has been “sent to the usual suspects, but they’ve got a big problem on their hands,” Fleming says. “They commissioned all these plays up to 2020, and then they couldn’t put anyone of them on. So there is a backlog of plays.”

The risk for theatre-goers, says Pullen, is that in-demand playwrights will desert theatre for vastly better-remunerated projects in screen and television.

“We want to negotiate fair terms for everyone, but going backwards is not the place to start,” Pullen says.

Meanwhile, Fleming is hopeful of consensus, “something that helps us, and helps them”.

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