Stoking creative fires: Counting down to Public Domain Day 2026
Until I saw it performed earlier this month, I had doubts that one could successfully adapt an unthemed magazine issue into a stage play. But that’s what the New Classics Collective did with the first and only issue of Fire!!, a literary magazine “devoted to younger Negro artists” published in Harlem in 1926. The play, which premiered at the Quintessence Theatre in my Philadelphia neighborhood, laid a light dramatic frame over a set of performances of plays, poems, stories, drawings and essays from the magazine’s sole issue, including early work by authors like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston who are still known to many readers today.
As a review in fhe Philadelphia Inquirer notes, the play, like the magazine issue that inspired it, is a bit of a hot mess as a whole, but has a lot of talent going into its various parts, and it impressed a sold-out multiracial audience the night I went. The magazine itself perished after its first issue, after a fire destroyed the publication’s office. But both the then-new magazine and the new play that’s just been created from it are bold creative experiments, and I’m confident that the people who produced and experienced the play will go on to create more and better work, whether it’s new versions of what I saw in the play’s premiere, or other work inspired by it, just as the authors and artists in the magazine did.
Along with the people who produced it, we have the public domain to thank for the experience. All 1926 publications joined the public domain in the United States just a few years ago. That makes it possible for anyone who’s found an unburnt copy of Fire!! to digitize it and put it online without needing permission from anyone, as several online book collections now have done. And it means that the New Classics Collective, or anyone else intrigued by the magazine’s content, can freely adapt and repurpose it as they like, without needing to work out deals with all of the creators whose works were adapted for the play. These new versions will have their own copyrights for a time, just as the original 1926 pieces did. But eventually, when they too join join the public domain, they will be free for all of us to remember, share, preserve, and renew as part of our common cultural heritage.
Fifty days from today, the public domain will grow further for many people around the world. In the United States, the last copyrights for 1920s publications (except for sound recordings) joined the public domain here last year. This coming January 1, a new wave of copyright expiration will reach the start of the 1930s, with all remaining publication copyrights from 1930 expiring (as well as 1925 sound recording copyrights). And starting tomorrow, I’ll be featuring selected works that will be joining the public domain here, in short daily posts that will appear on this blog, and also on some social media networks. On Mastodon and other services on the “fediverse“, you can follow this blog by following the user @everybodyslibraries.com, or the hashtag #PublicDomainDayCountdown. I’ll also boost the posts from my own personal Mastodon account (https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom). That account uses the Bridgy Fed service to connect to Blue Sky, where I believe you should be able to follow the user @JMarkOckerbloom.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy. I’m not aware of any way to automatically get my posts on other large commercial social media, but folks relying on sites dependent on the likes of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg may want to diversify their information sources in any case.
If you follow my posts, I hope you’ll hear about a number of works and creators you know and love, as well as ones you might not be familiar with. You can get an even more diverse and inclusive set of works and perspectives if you also check out other sources that will be promoting the public domain (which I expect to include Wikipedia, the Public Domain Review, the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and the Internet Archive as we get closer to the new year). Enjoy the countdown!
#Books #copyright #film #publicDomain #PublicDomainDayCountdown #writing
