DR Jason: Are there really "powers that be" who wander around checking Community Theatre productions to make sure that they haven't made any changes to the original script?
When the Vixter was in Peter Pan people were practically begging the director to cut the parts of the maid, and the non speaking roles of the ostrich, kangeroo and lion. It only slowed down the action and added not a wit to the story.
She said that any changes like this would be a violation of the performance license and the theatre group would be fined and never given another performance license again.
I do not doublt that such language is written into whatever contracts are signed( admittedly I have never been involved in the administrative side of these things so I am entirely clueless.) but how strictly is such a clause enforced?
If you do have people that wander around from performance to performance checking on accuracy how much does the job pay and are there any job openings?
We do not have hired spies, though I'd certainly love it if we did. No, we leave the tattling to the cast members, crew members, bitter box office staff members who wish they were onstage (been there, done that), and members of other theatre groups who wish to shut down or seriously damage the reputation of other groups. Believe me, there are PLENTY of tattlers. We call them snitches around these parts.
With the vast expanse of information available online, we are often able to do Google searches on our shows to see who's doing what and if anyone is really licensed to do it. We also come across things inadvertently sometimes, which is a lot of fun. "Hi, this is Jason from MTI...I just happened upon your website that says you're doing Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST next week. I seem to have misplaced your contract. Perhaps you could fax a copy of it to me?" That's fun.
We also hire a clippings service to look for reviews and related articles across the country who look out specifically for our titles. They're not looking for contract violations, of course - just articles that mention our shows. We catch a lot of people that way.
Then there are the groups who slip through the cracks and never get caught. They will eventually, somewhere down the line, but I can guarantee that 98% of the groups who produce musicals cut or alter SOMETHING in the script and/or score. Contractually, not one word or note may be altered, but it's very difficult to enforce that rule. We heavily rely on trust, which sometimes comes back to bite us in the arse.
There's nothing worse than getting a call from the author of a show who just HAPPENED to see a community theatre production of their show that just HAPPENED to be 40 minutes shorter than it was supposed to be. They're never too happy about that, so we try to curtail that issue.
If a group IS caught, they're issued a cease and desist. Either they return the material to its original, licensed version or they must close. We have an in-house lawyer who deals with that. The C&D scares most groups into compliance, but we have been known to send in federal marshals to block entrances and prevent audiences from seeing productions. It's extreme, but it's also a federal law that must be upheld. Usually, if you make an example of one group, the rest take notice.
We recently caught a group who did a completely illegal production of RENT, which is now our property. The show is still on Broadway, so it's obviously not available for licensing, so they can't even pretend like the materials weren't bootlegged. We will send them a sizeable bill for the royalty - something to the tune of $2000 per performance, plus a bill for what would have been the rental fee. As the show is still on Broadway, the fee will be somewhat in scale to what the B'way production would make off however many performances they did. Again, extreme, but I bet they won't steal another show again...or they'll long and hard before they do. We know a community theatre isn't going to be able to pay that much money. It's a scare tactic to teach them a lesson. But they will be expected to pay something.
Just imagine their faces when they get a bill out of the blue for $10,000!
