www.broadwayworld.com: "You win some, you lose some; you have to roll with the punches!" Maine State Music Theatre's Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark says with a broad smile. He is talking about the process of acquiring the theatrical rights to produce the shows he does each year - a process which is the inevitable and crucial departure point for any theatrical season. And yet, despite Clark's seemingly sanguine attitude toward these negotiations, the reality is that crafting the sensational seasons he has each year for the company is anything but a game of chance. It is the product of planning, strategy, hard work, and the increasing respect in which MSMT is held by the industry.
3 comments:
The relationship between a theatre and the holder of the rights of a show is a very touchy relationship. I have seen first hand what happens when a show violates those rules. It’s not pretty. What the article hits on and that many artistic directors fail to grasp is that yes, subtle changes can be made but you cannot change the meaning or integrity of the work. You also can’t change, subtract or add to a published work since you are not the author. I remember the fights in the office between the director and producer over one particular show. The show was Grease and the director wanted to open the show the way the movie did, but that was not how the script was written and while the company received permission to add the songs from the movie, they did not have permission to change or remove from the show. Eventually the director backed down and it was a great show that the audience enjoyed but it could have been a disaster. Any producer or artistic director that wants to be able to get the big shows needs to be able to prove that they can follow the rules and fill the seats. Without those two hand in hand, good luck getting those rights. You’ll most likely be stuck doing a musical no one has heard of or one that has been done by 8 companies in your area in the last 4 years.
This article makes me appreciate the administrative, and in this cast the artistic director and sorting the rights. Season selection can be a form of art already, and the artistic director has to deal with procuring the rights on top of it. I wonder what it takes to step up as an artistic director from a director, and what background artistic directors tend to come from. Last summer, I have also witnessed the director yielding to the rights office's request. In this case, the director wanted to change the order of songs in Mamma Mia for the encore part, and the office did not allow the change at all. But in the same season, the director and cast for Million Dollar Quartet has asked for a different 'their' version of script (which was tour version than Broadway version) and it was done with no problem. But this article clarified my confused perception over these two contrasting examples. It is difficult to deal with the major rights houses, and it is a highly political form of art to deal with them.
I always knew that getting the rights to a show can prove difficult at times, but I never realized the politics that went behind it. I have a lot of respect for the people who have to obtain the rights for those theatres, as it cannot be an easy job. Something that I found interesting in this article was that the flexibility of the rights houses changes based on where the theatre is located. A theatre that is in or around New York is going to have a much harder time obtaining the rights to a show, let alone making any changes they want. I think that in Maine State’s case they use their ability to make slight changes to the script in order to benefit both parties. As they said in the article when the theatre sells more tickets the rights house also makes more money, as they get a royalty of each ticket sold. By making small changes such as cutting strong language they show that they know their audience, and are using their established relationship with the rights house to their advantage.
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