Yesterday, I received something in the mail from my publisher. It was in a 4 X 5 envelope, nothing special, and I tried to guess what it was.
Sometimes Pioneer send me copies of my scripts, but those always come in a big Priority Mail envelope. And besides, I'd already received the ten free scripts of my latest play, The Real Pirates Don't Wear Tiaras, so I knew it couldn't be that.
Sometimes they send me catalogs or a T-shirt with the logo of one of my plays, but those also come in bigger envelopes.
Sometimes they sent me contracts to sign, or copies of contracts that I've already signed, but I didn't have anything in the pipeline so I knew it couldn't be that either.
I was stumped.
So I tore it open. It turned out to be the first foreign language translation of one of my plays. A publisher in Switzerland, Theaterverlag Kaliolabusto, had negotiated the exclusive right to license How I Met Your Mummy in Switzerland and translated the script into German so that they could market it there.
The situation is a win-win-win. Kaliolabusto gets a play with a proven track record, Pioneer gets the play into a country they normally wouldn't have access to, and I get my usual royalty for any performances they license.
In fact, Kaliolabusto has already licensed a performance in that country, although when it first popped up on the Pioneer website over a year ago, I didn't realize that it had been in German. The group that had put on that performance was Sofa-Theater in the historic village of Hindelbank.
I don't expect a lot of productions from Kaliolabusto. Switzerland is a small country, of course, and even their most popular plays don't get more than 7 or 8 productions a year. But it makes me smile to know that one of my works is now being done in another tongue.
Wie wundervoll!
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