Book Talk: Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856-1951

The Stanford Center for Law and History and the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford presented a conversation around the book Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856-1951 livestreaming on the commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Thursday 5 May 2022 at 12:40 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 2:40 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 3:40 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).

Please join us for a book talk with author and Stanford Center for Law and History Fellow Brent Salter: “Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856-1951.” The hybrid event is co-hosted between the Stanford Center for Law and History and the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford.

Commentators for the event include Derek Miller (Harvard English), Kara Swanson (Northeastern Law), Marlis Schweitzer (York Theatre), Jose Bellido (Kent Law), and Ann Folino White (Michigan State Theatre). The event will be chaired by Amalia Kessler (SCLH Director and Stanford Law) and Kathy Bowrey (UNSW Law).

Register to join the Zoom or in-person event here, or watch the livestream on this page.

Abstract:
The book is a historical account of how creation is negotiated in the American theatre. It is also about how the American theatre has structured its industry relationships and how industry stakeholders, and in particular dramatists, have responded to these structures through industry customs and collective organization. The research seeks to explain how stakeholders who controlled the transformation of the dramatic work from the playwright’s manuscript to the theatrical stage asserted expansive power over theatrical creation between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. These stakeholders (mediators of the American theatre) evolved in different forms: for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental. They included theatrical agents, transnational publishers, producers and managers that emerged and formed combination businesses, and government programs established during the New Deal. Instead of situating copyright law at the center of legal authority structures in the American theatre, the book explores how labor relationships, administrative structures and processes, control over material resources, informal guild expectations and minimum contracts, and other professional norms, all shape how theatre-makers relate cultural production to the more nebulous space of a realized theatrical performance on a stage.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing-arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected] or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal. View the video archive of past events.