Dramatists Guild Legal Defense Fund Releases New Guide for Producing on College Campuses

The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund has introduced their new toolkit, Dramatic Changes: A Guide to Producing Live Stage Works on College Campuses in Turbulent Times.

The DLDF toolkit explores how students, administrators and educators can work together to resolve the tensions between the rights of free expression and the need to advance values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access when producing shows on college campuses. It is intended to prepare those involved in presenting theatrical works in an academic setting and empower them to address any potential controversies that might arise at any stage of a planned production.

"We began to see an increase in attempts (some successful, some not) to shut down stage productions on college campuses. These attempts differed from such incidents in the past, not only in number, but in kind-in the complex and nuanced issues which they raised," said DLDF president John Weidman. "Our ambition was to make a useful, balanced, and informed contribution to what are certain to be the ongoing debates around these college cancelations going forward. The DLDF's Dramatic Changes toolkit is the result of our efforts."

The DLDF developed its toolkit by forming a working group of educators, activists, non-profit organizations, and dramatists to study and address the many compelling concerns raised by the issue of school cancelations. The group spent over two years examining a series of case studies, to see how and why these cancelations occurred, to see what the key moments were in the process that had caused them, to identify similarities between the cases, and to determine what worked and what had not. The group's interviews and analyses lead to the creation of the toolkit. It provides the legal context in which productions are produced and canceled, and then offers guidance at every step of a theatrical production (from the process of play selection, to its casting, rehearsal, and performance, to its aftermath), as well as providing a list of additional resources.

The DLDF has now made the toolkit available to help all of the stakeholders navigate their way to an opening night that is safe and satisfying for everyone involved. It is the DLDF's hope that their guide can help school communities, including the students, faculty and administrators living and working there, to create opportunities for healthy discussion and disagreement, bound by mutual respect, unified by a common understanding of the unique and vital role that theatre can play in their lives.

Visit https://thedldf.org/college-toolkit to download the toolkit today.

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