This fall, Second Stage was forced to scrap their proposed production of “A Very Potter Musical” because of complications involving the acquisition of rights to the show. Although this show faced a host of difficulties, its failure is illustrative of the complex steps involved in acquiring the rights for Second Stage plays.
Blaire Laurie ’12, a long-standing Second Stage staff member, detailed the ins and outs of the steps necessary to obtain the rights to a show, and precautions necessary to keep their show out of legal trouble.
“After getting approved by Second Stage, the director contacts the administrative assistant in the theater department [Kris McQueeney],” Laurie said. “The director gives her certain information: the name of the show, who owns the rights, when/where the show is going up, how many performances they want to do, etc. If the director has trouble getting some of this information, we’re here to help.”
The time line for this process varies from show to show.
“For some shows, such as ‘24 Hour Play Festival,’ getting rights is almost instantaneous; for others, it takes time,” McQueeney wrote in an email to The Argus. “With ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,’ for instance, the company—MTI—emailed back a contract for the rights that required the director to provide additional information before I could complete the contract and send it back with payment. Then I had to move money around. The whole process for this show took just shy of three weeks to complete; it took an additional week or two to receive the materials from MTI.”
Certain shows, such as “Spelling Bee,” are surprisingly difficult to secure the rights for, but Laurie said that there are specific pitfalls a director can avoid when selecting a show.
“Newer plays are definitely more difficult to get rights to,” she said. “If things are on Broadway, if they’re touring, or if things are widely being performed, you usually can’t get the rights. This is because the companies that have the rights to these plays are usually more selective about who they give the license to, whereas the companies who own really obscure plays that no one wants to do are more likely to accept everyone.”
The University has lost a few potential shows to these conflicts. “Hair,” Laurie’s original choice for last semester, had to be replaced due to a concurrent national tour. She had a successful production of “Rent,” but due to another regional production, it was a challenge to get the rights to that show as well. According to Laurie, it is vital that directors plan ahead.
“[W]e stress getting the rights very early on, because if you can’t, you are going to want time to look for alternatives,” she said.
Obtaining the rights to “A Very Potter Musical” was a slightly different situation. The show was originally put on in 2009 by “Starkid,” a theater group at the University of Michigan. Their staged production gained fame when it went viral on YouTube. Due to the nature of the production, it was unclear who owned the rights to the show. According to Laurie, the would-be-director of “Potter,” Shelby Arnold ‘12 tried to contact Starkid numerous times but never heard back.
“Starkid had released a YouTube video stating that no one else could do the show, but it was unclear as to whether or not they actually owned the rights,” Laurie said. “Since we weren’t getting any answers and it had become so complicated and risky, we decided that we couldn’t produce it.”
Another problem was that it was unclear whether or not Starkid had the rights to the Harry Potter character names and plots. A play can reference another work without permission, but “A Very Potter Musical” is an outright parody that blatantly utilizes the names “Hogwarts,” “Harry,” “Hermoine,” and many others.
“Second Stage can’t allow unlicensed shows to go up because if it comes out that we did an unauthorized performance, we could get [sued],” Laurie said. “Because we are such a small group here, we would not be able to survive that.”
Assuming a producer has gained the rights to the show, there are steps the director must take to keep Second Stage and themselves out of legal trouble with the rights companies.
“When you apply for rights, you receive a lot of different materials, including the rights agreement,” Laurie said. “That one’s really important, because a lot of particular rules about the show, like ‘the writers name has to fill this spatial percentage of all posters printed,’ etc.”
Most importantly, the rights companies include rules about casting—specifically, reversing gender and casting the opposite gender in roles. These rules limited the cast of “Waiting for Godot” last semester, as Dakota Gardner ’11, the director, was only permitted to cast men.
Laurie also had a run-in with gender-specific stipulations.
“When I directed ‘Sweeney Todd’ my sophomore year, more girls than guys auditioned, so we wanted to cast some girls in traditionally male roles,” she recalled. “We were able to do it, but the rights agreement said that we couldn’t alter the script, meaning the female actor would have to play a man, rather than changing the gender of the character. In other plays, changing the gender of the character might not be a problem.”
Second Stage assumes the cost of all of the rights for shows each season.
“Paying for rights is part of our sponsorship,” Laurie said. “We usually don’t take that money out of the general budget for the show. Rights to a lot of our shows, like ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘Rent,’ cost around $2,000—and even that’s on the low end. But then again, you have shows like ‘24 Hour,’ which costs about $75, so it’s a spectrum—but musicals are generally more expensive.”
Second Stage has a managing liaison, Dylan Zwickel ’14, who works with the theater department and the CFA, and determines the group’s budget.
“We have an unusually high number of shows with expensive rights this semester,” Zwickel said.
While Second Stage does not make it a policy to take the money for the rights out of the general budget for the shows, given the influx of productions and the current cap on funding, everyone might need to scale back. Students looking to direct a show for second semester may want to opt for a more obscure title, and keep the budget low.