comedy

How To Make Money Writing Stage Plays – Billy Van Zandt

Filmcourage

Published

December 4, 2024

[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]

Film Courage: What are different ways that a playwright can make money from their work?

Billy Van Zandt, Comedy Writer/Playwright/Author: If you’re published you get a piece of every script that’s sold. You get paid for the licensing fee for someone to do your show at their theater.

If there’s merchandise that goes along with your show, you can sell that.

Your play can turn into a TV series, you make a great deal of money doing that.

It can be turned into a film. You make a great deal of money doing that and all the shows that we’ve done (on 25 shows) we’ve only had one show option for a movie and they never made it but I mean some shows belong on stage only. Some of them you look at it and go Oh that would make a good show, good TV show but you have to be published to make money on a play. Or if it gets optioned to be on a Broadway run before you actually publish it, you’re going to make money off the box office.

But it’s possible to make a living as a playwright.

Film Courage: Can you take us through the process once you’re published? How does this work? How do you become published?

Billy: Our first play was Love, Sex, and the I.R.S. and we opened it at the Dam Site Dinner-Theatre in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. After our six- week run we held it over for four more weeks or they held it over. I wasn’t producing it. We took letters from the producer with the script and all the critic reviews and we shipped it up to Samuel French (again now called Concord Theatricals because they bought up a bunch of Tams-Witmark and Music International in Samuel French) and they agreed to publish the show.

What that means basically is they put the synopsis of your show in their catalog. The catalogues go out to all the theaters who are looking for shows. People find the show and go That’s the one I want to do! They call up and they make a deal depending on the size of the theater and the cost of the tickets that they’re going to sell. If it’s an amateur production it’s less. If it’s a professional equity production the cost is…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).

About:

Billy Van Zandt and his writing partner, the late Jane Milmore, are two of the most often produced playwrights in the world. Billy and Jane met at a high school acting competition in their home state of New Jersey. Together for 46 years, they wrote and starred in 25 plays together. Billy’s solo play “The Property Known as Garland” starring his ex-wife Adrienne Barbeau broke box office records at Off-Broadway’s Actors Playhouse. The plays have been produced in thousands of theaters worldwide, including two productions directed by Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis (“Billy and Jane are funny, outrageous, off-the chart writers/performers”) and one by film legend Burt Reynolds. For television, these award-winning writers have produced over three hundred hours of television comedy, including “Newhart;” “Martin,” which won them a People’s Choice Award; “The Hughley’s,” which won them a Prism Award;” “Suddenly Susan” for Brooke Shields; “Daddy Dearest” for Don Rickles and Richard Lewis; “Anything But Love” for Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis; “The Wayans Bros.”; and “I Love Lucy: The Very First Show” which won them an Emmy nomination. As an actor, Billy made his film debut in “Jaws 2”; Billy lives in Los Angeles, when he’s not touring the world in the last Van Zandt/Milmore musical, “The Boomer Boys Musical.”