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Performing Rights SillinessDateline: 19th September, 2004Well done to the Alrewas Dramatic Society and Dale Wasserman! In our news story you can read how the society was refused permission to perform One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but was given the go-ahead by no less a person than the author himself, US writer Dale Wasserman. Alrewas is a Staffordshire village - not a city, not a town, not even a market town, but a village - of just under 3,000 people, around 120 miles from London. However the rights holders of Cuckoo's Nest clearly feel that everyone in the village and the surrounding area is gong to say, "Oh no. We won't go to see Hollywood star Christian Slater, stage star Frances Barber and TV star Mackenzie Crook at the Guielgud Theatre. It'll be much better to see the Alrewas Dramatic Society do the same play." Unbelievable! But it's not just the Cuckoo's Nest rights holders: they all do it. I've known permission refused for school productions of shows because of a West End production almost four hundred miles away! It just shows how little they understand the busienss they're in. If little Mary or little Johnny are in a school production of a show and their parents are taking them to London for a holiday, or if a touring version of the same show comes to their local theatre, Mary and Johnny are going to make their parents' lives a misery until they agree to take them to see it. And amateur actors are the same: they'll go to see a West End/touring production of a show they've been in - even if only to convince themselves that they were better! Once you get into this performing rights business, you realise just how silly it can be. When I was teaching, we were once refused the rights to do a particular show because an amateur company in a city ten miles away was doing it within a month or two of our proposed production. Did they really think the parents of my kids would all have gone to the amateur group's show? No chance! But if we did do it, then all the kids would want to see the other production. I can see a good case for restricting professional rights when a show is running in the West End - but even then you have a situation like that of Blood Brothers which opened in the West End in 1983, when it won the Olivier for Best Musical, and is still running. At the same time, there is a version more or less constantly touring to pretty packed houses - but amateur and school rights? It's just nonsense, and it's not only the amateur performers who are losing out but the writers and rights holders do as well. It's a short-sighted policy, presumably insisted upon by the production companies rather than the rights holders but they are, in fact, too blind to realise that they are cutting off their own noses. It's a long-standing tradition which has been the norm for at least as long as I've been involved in theatre (and that's around fifty years!) and it's about time that this particular tradition was jettisoned like the unthinking rubbish it is. Articles Indices:
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