Monday, March 04, 2019
Producer relents on ‘Mockingbird’ rights, letting some shows go on
The Seattle Times: Broadway producer Scott Rudin, facing a barrage of criticism over his efforts to shut down productions of “To Kill a Mockingbird” around the United States, on Friday offered an olive branch to the affected theaters, letting them put on a version of the play.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
While there is no love regained for Rudin, I have to applaud the theater industry for making this situation such a controversial issue. I do not think that without this pushback that these theaters would have gotten what they deserved. I do applaud the producer for having the brains to realize he had made a mistake that could impact the broadway production, and remedied it. It's clear that all he cares about is money, and it's also clear that if he had not been lampooned in the media that he would not have offered these theaters the opportunity to stage the show. I hope that this teaches all Broadway producers a lesson about this type of blatant money focused strong arming, because it really reflects poorly on everyone involved, and casts shadows on what would otherwise have been a good production. Hopefully these small theaters will be able to regain some of their lost income through this new license to stage the current show, and who knows, maybe they'll even motivate audiences to go to Broadway.
Situations like the above fascinate yet boggle me. I am fascinated by the amount of politics that is being played from various sides and boggles me as to how such a small situation has been blown out of proportions by all parties involved.
Every industry functions on some sort of socio-politic dynamics which come in play every now and then And that is what happened in this situation also. Some chose to do something=g without properly thinking every thing through and then people just latched on to the opportunity to criticize m and pull the other person down, so that the former can extract some benefits.
But this boggles me also because I am sure that they are more pressing issues that surround the industry and the world at this point so instead of addressing them why are we spending time in fixing something that does not even affect a lot of people.
This issue has been played on and blown out of proportion by some people who are not able to prioritize the needs of various issues.
I had never really heard of anything like this happening before. I feel bad for the theaters, especially the very small regional theaters, that had to stop their production as soon as they heard. In a way I feel like, yes broadway is obviously higher up, but this could potentially make theaters feel invalidated. By this I mean, all their hard work, dedication, money, time, and effort is to be thrown away, shut down, and not show cased because of the fact that broadway is doing something new. I don’t fully understand the legalities behind this dilemma, and they probably are valid, but I still feel like this could’ve been done better somehow. There was so much money put into these productions, especially a legendary and notable one as “To Kill A Mockingbird”, that I feel like the theaters should’ve gotten the chance to finish their production, but then again there is a lot more that goes into those decisions that I am unaware of, making this particular situations hard to judge.
This is a very sticky situation to be in as a small theater company. Hearing about the new Sorkin production of "To Kill a Mockingbird", a thought struck in my mind, isn't this already a show? Don't, get me wrong, I think that this show is a great update to the theatrical cannon and very relevant to the turbulent times we live in, but the show is certainly not new. I'm sure that many theaters around the country had this same exact thought, why is it that suddenly a new script can have a licensing or patent to a story that has been told and tried for years. I do however see Scott Rudin's reaction to this entire situation to be rather appropriate and actually very nice considering that it was brought onto theaters this last minute. Being able to have the rights and licensing for a show thats on broadway is the dream of many smaller theaters, and seeing that Aaron Sorkin's show seems to be very strong, I'm sure it will be a hit all around.
I definitely agree with Shahzad that I thought "To Kill a Mockingbird" was already a show and so reading this article there is no surprise. What did surprise me is that Rudin didn't talk to the people who own the rights to the other production about stopping the production with that script. I was also surprised to read that Rudin was giving the new script to other people. Does this mean that the old script is no one longer able to be used? I feel like Rudin can't gain control of both scripts. I am also surprised that this isn't a bigger problem as through my work in children's theatre, there are a bunch of shows like Alice and Wonderland, Naria, and others that have a couple adaptations of them owned by different companies. I wonder what the rules are about who gets rights and if the rights to each of these shows are counted as individual scripts or if each adaptation is counted as the same thing because it is all telling the same story. The most ridiculous thing about this article and about many rights issues involving Broadway is that the producer is worried about getting enough people to see the Broadway show. I hate to say it but no community theatre production is going to be better than Broadway and as long as the correct contributors are being paid, it doesn't matter that the show is being done on Broadway or not in my opinion. Why can't multiple places get the rights to the same show? I think companies are too worried over little amounts of money.
Post a Comment