In this interview, Broadway entertainment lawyer Ben Feldman explains how he entered the field, the unique responsibilities of an entertainment attorney in theater, and the evolution of Broadway business over the past two decades. He recounts his early start as an assistant to producer Darryl Roth, his law school education at NYU, and his subsequent work at a boutique firm that later became his own practice. Feldman describes the lawyer’s involvement at the very beginning of a production—acquiring rights, structuring financing, and drafting contracts for creative talent—emphasizing that well‑crafted agreements act as roadmaps that sustain collaborations. He discusses how new media (streaming, filmed stage productions) and novel source material (comic books, podcasts, diaries) have reshaped deal structures. For aspiring Broadway attorneys, he advises reading plays and screenplays, honing precise writing, and mastering financial waterfalls and math. He also addresses the tension between protecting creators and stifling creativity, noting the limits of NDAs and the importance of detailed scripts for copyright protection. Finally, he shares an inspiring example, the show “You’re in Town,” which illustrated how thoughtful legal contracts can enable a work’s artistic and commercial success.
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Go ahead and give us your name.
Ben Feldman.
And what do you do, Ben Feldman?
Um, I'm an entertainment lawyer, and I mostly work in theater, and I do a lot of documentary work as well, and, uh, television, uh, and artists, casting directors, and talent agents.
Let's take the big branch of it. When you say entertainment attorney, What does the entertainment side of it— how does that make it different or unique?
Well, you're working on intellectual property a lot, like cultural events, um, things that people either pay a subscription fee or ticket revenue to see, entertainment, um, mostly copyright, something that requires copyright licensing of some sort.
How did you get into this chair, into this business? What, what took you down this path?
A family friend introduced me to Darryl Roth, who is a great producer, and at the time she needed an assistant, and she was, I believe, getting started. She had just done Closer Than Ever and Nick and Nora. And which seemed like it was gonna be a really big, great musical. And I became her assistant for 2 years, and I learned everything about theater from her. Everything. She said, you know, you're not super organized, but you're really good with the contracts, so maybe you should go to law school. And I said, well, I'll go to law school if you write my recommendation. And she said, deal. And so she wrote my recommendation, and I got in. And then I went to NYU Law School. And then I sort of had to be a lawyer.
[Speaker] Did you, once you graduated, did you go right into entertainment?
[Speaker] Yes. I was very lucky because Mark Sendroff had become a friend of my partner at the time, and he, Mark, gave me a summer job. And then another man named Mark Beagleman and his partner Ron Feiner hired me. Right there. And that was— Mark Beagleman and Ron Feiner have since passed away recently, but I stayed with them. And, you know, when we basically— a bunch of us formed our own firm, having used to work for Beagleman and Feiner.
And when you moved from— you're working with Darryl as her assistant, you're in the entertainment side of it. What— where do you come into the equation? Of a Broadway show?
[Speaker:PAUL] That's a really good question. Basically, the very beginning when you are deciding that you might need to enter into transactions with other people with regard to a work of art like a Broadway show, that's where I should come in. When you're acquiring rights, borrowing or obtaining money from early investors who are going to finance your development process, your hiring of a GM, and your hiring of a lawyer, your creation of financing documents so that you can bring in the money, your engagement of people you employ as independent contractors like a director, a casting director, a general manager. So pretty early on, a lawyer can really help organize the different transactions and licenses that you're entering into.
And you and I have had the pleasure of working together, and one thing that you talk about is that everything in life is a collaboration. And when you're making a deal, how do you look at— you're obviously representing somebody who might be representing some— somebody else. How do you approach that, that process of, of doing a deal?
Yeah, yeah. Um, Well, I try to close the deal and make it happen. And you really don't— and you— I actually am not one of those people that's just my way or the highway and ask for things that are going to make my client have the best deal in history. And, you know, I try to just— I want to check off the boxes to make sure that I'm protecting my clients so that there's never— any record of me not warning them of something that's not customary. But besides that, I was like, well, how can we all work together and figure out how we can make this deal close and how everyone— I mean, I think of a contract as a roadmap that can guide you years into the future. And if it's a good contract that's well drafted and that everyone is happy with, it can really govern a good relationship and help you moderate and resolve any kind of conflict or problem or decision way into the future. But if it's not a good contract, or if someone's unhappy with it or not quite treated fairly, it's going to show up in the relationship and affect the work later on. You do very interesting things, like you'll do a theater show but have it on audiovisual screening, right? And almost like create a new genre or new medium. So that's exciting work because there's not like 1,000 precedential old forms for that. So you have to really think like— it puts you in a good seat to be in as a lawyer because you're like, well, how can I be the fair person and figure out from all my experience what's the right share for everyone? What's the right share for the movie person versus the play person or the financier versus the this person? And there's all these different elements and it's very exciting.
And now you've been in this business for a while. Broadway, if you go back and look at, say, 20 years ago, it was fairly— the transactions would be either it was an underlying property that you were acquiring the rights for or it was an original work. How has the types of shows and/or relationships changed in that time?
I still think, well, there's different new types of media, new types of distribution. So like there's filming and capture of live stage experiences. There's streaming and download. Mostly streaming is a big huge difference from when I started. I do a lot of film as well. There is— it's still either an original work or based on something else, but now it's like it's based on a comic book, different types of genre that we didn't see before. Like, it's based on the, the diaries and podcasts of this person along with the life rights from their sister. People are just much more creative and, um, and get really just getting out there looking for inspiration that triggers a story.
For somebody that is— loves the theater and is inspired by what you're doing besides interning for Daryl Roth, what would To be an entertainment attorney in the Broadway space, what would you say they should be studying, learning? What are qualities that they should have?
Well, first of all, I actually think it's a good idea to read plays and screenplays and really know what you're dealing with. I've always read plays. I've always been— my uncle was a playwright named S.N. Behrman way back. Long time ago. He was a big Broadway playwright with many Broadway shows, and from that I got interested in reading plays. I read, um, in high school and college I would read Wendy Wasserstein, Christopher Durang, Terrence McNally, Lanford Wilson. I became an expert, and then I became an expert on how to read screenplays, and Knowing how to talk to a client about what this is, where it could go, what the concerns are, what my opinion is, do I feel passionate about it, is for me very valuable. Personally, I believe that a good English knowledge of English and grammar is important to me. Because I strive to be extraordinarily articulate, especially in writing, because there's no excuse if you have the time to put a good sentence together. I always say, but I'm very old-fashioned. I do a lot of financial waterfalls because I'm interested in financing work and moving money from one place to another and offering. So it's really, I think, important to have a good structural knowledge of math. How a project works out or how a contract ends up being discharged depends on the the zeitgeist of popular culture. Like, how are you going to predict if something's going to do well, or in what media it will do well and when, and what are people looking for? Like, right now people are looking for really meaningful, nutritional theater, really theatrical, challenging theater.
We have more artists creating today than ever, and with content coming from so many different directions, How do you balance the protection versus stifling somebody from being creative?
A lot of people won't show their scripts without having other people sign NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, and those are very difficult to enforce or to get people to sign in the first place because people can always say, well, I was working on this idea already. And ideas are not really covered by copyright. So expression is. How you— the dialogue that you particularly came up with is covered by copyright. So it's hard to protect people who create something original. They often want to protect their concept or idea or theme, and it's not— easy to do that. So I, I sometimes just say like, look, if you, you just have to put it out there in the world and, and, you know, not, not worry so much because it does, it is gonna stifle your creativity. And you should make a detailed script with dialogue and that will protect you.
What are some inspiring shows or inspiring moments for you that you just say, I have to do this?
You're in Town was so inspiring to me because it was, I think, the first work that just truly was written from a point of view of irony. And in that way, it was so modern to me. And it also brought up climate change and how we as a society behave towards our resources. And it was just so funny and so perfectly done. Working on that from a legal perspective over the years, I feel, and watching the journey of that show and how the rights have been exploited based on these original contracts— I mean exploited in a good way, in the legal way.
All right, Ben, last thing to our audience that is watching this. Anything you want to say just to end this as far as any inspirational words, any thoughts that you want to share?
It's important that we all remember to protect ourselves. So the most important thing for a lawyer is to protect you. So, I mean, it's great to get the best deal in the world and the most money ever, but just make sure you've got the— also that you've got a lawyer that definitely, like, gets you the insurance and makes sure you're covered under that and makes sure you're indemnified and makes sure you have no liability. I mean, it's so— I've learned that almost like the basics of a legal agreement are so important, and they've really helped me out a lot in some tough situations. I've also learned it's, you know, it's just impossible to— I've noticed that some shows that are hits or flops wouldn't have been hits or flops in different years, and I think so much of it is like riding a wave of what the public seems to want that at that particular time. And I think it can be influenced by who the president is. It can be influenced by a lot of things.
