I created original artwork for several dozen plays and musicals produc

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  • I created original artwork for several dozen plays and musicals produced by a local community theater. All the productions were staged with permission from the copyright holders, and stated as such on all the promotional materials, except when the play such as a Shakespeare comedy was in the public domain.

    The posters show the name of each play, the author(s) and composer(s) names and in some cases suggest the shape and/or spirit of the famous logo and imagery associated with that show, although none of them were traced or photocopied from the original Broadway play. All of the drawing, rendering and typesetting was created from scratch by me. In many other cases I did not refer to another artist's imagery at all, but came up with my own logos, poses, compositions, etc. using only the text of the play as my guide.
  • You didn't ask a question here. Are you asking who owns the posters now? Was there any type of written contract with the theater? Did you receive pay? Are you consider an employee of any type? Basically, it can either be considered a work-for-hire, in which case, unless stated otherwise, the theater now owns the images. Then there's the question of how original are they? Could they be considered derivative works? I know community theaters tend to be very informal about this type of thing since they are mostly staffed by volunteers, so if you are concerned about it, I would have it stated. Perhaps a Creative Commons agreement where either of you could reuse the images in the future.

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