This site is a working reference for people who put on plays without a big institution behind them: community theater groups, school drama programs, church basements, and small nonprofit companies. The domain has a history in theater production, and the site keeps that focus.
Most of the questions that stall a small production are not artistic. They are procedural: who actually grants the rights to perform a published play, what registering a script with the Copyright Office does and does not do, how 501(c)(3) status works for a theater company, where grant money for small companies actually comes from, and roughly what a production costs before you have sold a ticket.
The guides here each answer one of those questions in plain language, and each one points to the primary source — the U.S. Copyright Office, the National Endowment for the Arts, the IRS, and the field organizations that serve nonprofit and school theater — so you can check anything we say against the people who actually run the process.
The centerpiece is the Production Budget Estimator: pick your rights situation, venue, set scale, run length, and cast size, and get a rough planning figure for a community-scale production. It is a starting point for a board meeting or a season proposal, not a quote — but it is a much better starting point than a blank spreadsheet.