FreePlays.org - A Message to Playwrights

We are not trying to destroy your livelihood.

We are not attempting to trivialize the work that you do, nor the works that you produce.

FreePlays.org is dedicated to supporting greater participation and interest in drama, and love of drama and the arts in general.  Our main effort is the distribution of free scripts to anyone who will perform, teach, study, or read them.  As part of that effort we tell people about our site, and offer to publish any orginal script they may have written, or may care to write, subject to the terms at the bottom of this page.  We commonly receive four responses:
  1. Yes!  I'd love to share my plays with anyone who can use them.
  2. It is offensive to authors and to their work to ask them to give away their work for free.
  3. It is anti-capitalist to give away works away for free, and could destroy an industry/market segment.
  4. What about the poor, struggling playwrights?
Response 1 is the most common response from people who have actually written scripts.

Regarding response 2; we mean no offense.  It is not the case that we think your work is so bad that no one would or should pay for it.  If you believe your scripts have monetary value, and can (or want to) get money for publishing and royalties, hats off to you!  We respect this and wish you well.

We try to avoid offense by being careful to offer, but never to solicit. We tell people that FreePlays.org exists, we offer them the opportunity, if and only if they feel like freely distributing some of their work to the world, to use us as a channel or publication method.  If, despite our best efforts, you are offended by FreePlays.org or any of the ideas behind it, we apologize, and repeat:  we mean no offense, and wish you well.  Please just surf away from this website and forget all about us. 

Response 3 is discussed elsewhere on this site, which leaves us with response 4.

We know that playwrights have a hard row to hoe.  Even if minimal and infrequent, royalty and publication money can motivate a playwright, and help validate their work, and their vision of themselves as "published" playwrights.  We are not trying to eliminate either the income or the validation.

If you are already a known, established playwright with connections into the publishing and drama industry, FreePlays.org is unlikely to threaten your livelihood.  If our mission succeeds, and lots of people end up participating in and enjoying plays, the interest in drama and the amount of money people spend on theater will both increase.  The benefit to playwrights:  a bigger market, more demand for and interest in your work, more money for you.

If you are not a playwright, FreePlays.org is no threat to you either.  Maybe you're a drama instructor that wrote a few scripts.  Maybe you're a mom or dad who couldn't find a suitable script for "Hansel and Gretel", so you just wrote one up.  Maybe you're a high school or college student who wrote a play for a class assignment.  Now the scripts sit around gathering dust.  What are the chances that without FreePlays.org, someone will ever find out that the script even exists, and be able to find you, and you be able to find it, and the play is just right for their cast and audience?  Pretty low.  If you publish your play on FreePlays.org, the chances of all the above go from "low" to "excellent".  Your play can be found and performed to the benefit of all and the detriment of none.

And if you're a struggling playwright, living in an unheated garrett or dank roach-infested basement, carefully and devotedly crafting your beloved work, hoping against hope that someone will pick it up, and that your work will shine out, inspiring people and enriching of their lives, stimulating their souls, and psyches, making them laugh and/or cry?  Do you dream of becoming Renowned, Revered, and Rich?  Or perhaps, just having one of your plays staged, anywhere, by anyone?  Perhaps FreePlays.org can help (though we can't guarantee the "three R's").  Pick one or two of your plays, that you don't mind giving away freely.  Use FreePlays.org to publish them.  People will find your work;  FreePlays.org can deliver it to a larger audience than any other publisher.  If they like your work, they can contact you.  FreePlays.org provides free exposure, free publicity, free advertisement.
Creative Commons License
All works on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.  In short:
  1. You are free to print, copy, read, use, distribute, modify, and perform any and all of these works without royalty.
  2. If you distribute these works in any form (including recordings of performances), with or without modification, you must grant these same royalty-free rights.
For details, see Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License either here or here
This site is part of the Info Ring. Information wants to be free!  So make some free information.