Stage a play, gig or live show
Two sets of performing rights, a venue licence, a duty on admissions, and the question of what your cast actually are.
What reaches you, and in what order
Copyright Act 1987
Act 332The script and the music are separate permissions from separate owners, and a performing licence for one is not a licence for the other.
Collecting societies
Licensing bodiesLive and recorded music in the show engages the public performance rights administered by MACP and PPM, and the performers' remuneration collected by RPM.
Entertainment (Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur) Act 1992
Act 493In Kuala Lumpur the venue needs an entertainment licence and the conditions attached are where content control actually happens.
State entertainment enactments
State lawOutside KL, state enactments and council by-laws, which differ.
Entertainments Duty Act 1953
Act 103Entertainments duty is charged on payments for admission. Two reliefs in the Act itself are worth knowing: s.4(2) halves the rate where all the performers are actually present and performing and the bill is a stage play, ballet, music performance, lecture, recitation, variety, circus, travelling show or sport; and s.4(3)(a) exempts a stage play, ballet or traditional dance, music performance, lecture or recitation altogether where the Collector is satisfied it is put on by a non-profit society, institution or committee or that it is amateur. Note s.4(3)(b): pay any performer, instructor, producer, manager, conductor or adviser and it stops being amateur. Check which enactment applies to your state, because the collecting regime outside the Federal Territories is a state one.
Employment Act 1955
Act 265Whether the cast and crew are employees decides notice, leave, sick pay and which forum hears a complaint. Calling someone a freelancer does not make them one: control, integration and mutuality decide it.
Gig Workers Act 2025
Act 872** `That gives your cast and crew five things. A written agreement saying what the work is, what it pays and how. Payment within seven days if the agreement does not say. No termination without a proper reason. A free meeting run by the Director General for Industrial Relations to try to settle it. And if that fails, the Gig Workers Tribunal.
Children and Young Persons (Employment) Act 1966
Act 350Employment connected with public entertainment is separately regulated where a child is involved, and a parental release is not the whole answer.
Child Act 2001
Act 611The Child Act 2001 does not make a producer a mandatory reporter; that duty sits on doctors, family members and paid child care providers, and a chaperone or tutor you engage and pay is a child care provider. What reaches the producer is s.31: it is an offence for a person having the care of a child to neglect or abuse the child, or to permit it, with up to twenty years' imprisonment. Appoint a named, paid chaperone and record who had care of the child at every point.
Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994
Act 514Rigging, get-in, get-out and crowd. Since 1 June 2024 the duty can reach the principal, not just the crew's own employer, where the principal directs how the work is done; and every principal must in any event conduct a risk assessment under s.18B.
Anti-Sexual Harassment Act 2022
Act 840The Tribunal reaches conduct outside an employment relationship, which is how most theatre and music engagements are structured.
Penal Code
Act 574Section 298A on causing religious disharmony also reaches public imagery, and it is the heaviest of these: a minimum of two years' imprisonment, with the Criminal Procedure Code's discharge and good-behaviour-bond routes expressly shut off. Raise its constitutionality early. The Supreme Court held in Mamat bin Daud v Government of Malaysia [1988] 1 MLJ 119 that s.298A is in substance a law about religion, which is a State matter, and so beyond Parliament's power. It has never been repealed and it is still charged. Note the limit of the argument: the reasoning turns on Parliament legislating for the States, so it is at its strongest outside the Federal Territories and weakest in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, where Parliament does legislate on State subjects.
The employment question is upstream of everything. Get it wrong and you have also got the safety duty, the harassment forum and the tax treatment wrong.
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This page is published by ALIM (Art × Law Initiative Malaysia) as general legal information for Malaysia’s creative communities. It is not legal advice. It does not take your circumstances into account, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship with ALIM or with anyone associated with it.
The law changes. Each Act reproduced here is the Attorney General’s Chambers’ consolidated reprint and carries the date it was consolidated to; amendments made after that date do not appear in the text, and the authoritative version of any Malaysian law is the one published in the Federal Gazette. Subsidiary legislation, state enactments and local authority by-laws may also apply to your situation and are largely outside this library.
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