Directors’ copyrights… and Evita casting

A fascinating feature in The New York Times today looks at various attempts that have been made in the US to assert a director’s copyright over their staging of a new play and whether their contributions can be legally protected – and in other words, rewarded – if it becomes part of the “text” of the play itself on subsequent productions.

On the one hand, there’s the naked plagiarism of the sort that director Joe Mantello found when he visited a regional production of Love! Valour! Compassion! that he originally staged the New York premiere of: “Scene after scene, moment after moment, the staging was identical,” comments Mantello. “If you ran a video of the two productions side by side, no rational person would say it was ‘inspired by,’ or an homage: 95 percent of the show was an exact replica. I’m not talking about attitude and interpretation. I’m talking about visual images, blocking, choice of music” — none of this was in playwright Terrence McNally’s original script. When Mantello’s lawyers asked for acknowledgement of his work and a nominal fee, they refused, claiming that nothing had been copied, and that in any case, the staging was part of what they had licensed when they had licensed the play. Mantello duly prepared a copy of the script, detailing his directorial contributions in diagrams, descriptions and blocking notations, and applied for a copyright of his annotated script which was accepted. (The regional theatre in turn settled out of court in the director’s favour).

But there are two sides to every story, and as the director’s art is interpretative rather than a primary creative one, playwrights are anxious not to have a director assert too much control over their contribution: as playwright John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America, commented, “if a directors’ copyright is ever established, it will drastically limit a playwright’s ability to control the work which he creates.”

It would, he says, “clearly operate as liens on a playwright’s play”: as the New York Times puts it, “If each director’s staging of a relatively new play had copyright protection, very soon there would be no staging options left. The play would become so encumbered with licenses, or the risk of lawsuits, that it would be impossible to produce — a net loss to the culture. Even classic works like Romeo and Juliet might gradually be removed from the public domain, thus perverting the aim of copyright law, which is to increase the flow of ideas and artwork by providing an incentive to their creators.”

As Weidman argues, “If Leonard Bernstein had been in a position to copyright his interpretation of Mahler, would another conductor who thought that interpretation was right, and then conducted Mahler in the same way, be stealing from Bernstein?”

But the director is keen to protect himself, too. Mantello says, “The acknowledgement of what the director creates is very important to me. But with that comes a certain amount of responsibility. Not everything I do is a unique contribution…. But to protect myself if I’m working on a new piece, I now make a side agreement with the authors for a small participation in the subsidiary rights.”

Playwright Paul Rudnick wittily retorts, “From now on, I’m only going to have my plays directed by lawyers.”

In other news today, the Sunday Times today has broken the name of the actress who will be playing the title role of the forthcoming production of Evita, heading to the Adelphi Theatre in June. According to Richard Brooks, arts editor, the role has gone to an Argentine singer, dancer and actress called Elena Roger, reputedly one of that country’s biggest stars. According to Brooks’ report, “Roger’s voice is more rock star than musical diva, although she is a great admirer of the musical Chicago and recently appeared in Les Miserables in Argentina.”

The show and further casting is to be announced at a press conference on Tuesday; intriguingly, I also spent yesterday afternoon in the company of Michael Grandage, who is directing the new production. We were both at the Arcola in Dalston to see the matinee of Frank McGuinness’s play The Factory Girls there (virtually a site-specific piece of theatre, since the play is set in a shirt factory and the Arcola was, until it was discovered five years ago, a garment factory itself). Since we were both alone there, we spent the time before the show and during the interval talking. Evita did come up; but he was the soul of discretion when it came to the casting. “They’re terrified of it getting out,” he said – so he wouldn’t tell me! But it clearly has….