Have you been following the Urinetown lawsuits? Last year, a suit was filed by members of the creative team of the musical's original 2001 Broadway staging against a Chicago production that the members claimed had copied their work without permission. An out-of-court settlement, reached last November, involved payment of an undisclosed sum of money and acknowledgement that the Chicago production did indeed contain "original and creative works" from the Broadway staging.
It's About Movement
What makes this settlement so important to those interested in stage movement is that its subject was movement created by a director, in this case John Rando. While a show's design elements and choreography have historically enjoyed copyright protection, a director's work has not. Rando had applied for a copyright on his directorial contributions to Urinetown but was denied it because the U.S. Copyright Office doesn't recognize stage direction as copyrightable. The settlement, however, represents a significant step in the other direction, as it clearly recognizes a director's original contributions and implies they cannot be freely copied.
A similar suit is pending in Akron, Ohio, involving a dinner theatre production of Urinetown. Although a settlement might be in the best interests of all parties involved, it won't settle the larger issue. The Urinetown suits follow two other cases in which Broadway directors prevailed against out-of-town productions they'd accused of copying their work, but all the victories have come through out-of-court settlements. Director Joe Mantello accused a Florida theatre of copying his work on the 1995 Broadway production of Love! Valour! Compassion!, and Gerald Gutierrez went after an Illinois production of The Most Happy Fella that he believed replicated his 1992 Broadway staging and adaptation. While these settlements are likely to aid in establishing the originality of a director's stage movement and its copyright worthiness, because the issue has never been argued in court, there are no rulings to legally support the settlements' implications.
But why focus on just movement when a director's contributions to a production go far beyond that? The fact is, though a director's job is multifaceted, most of what he or she does cannot be measured in such a way as to qualify for copyright protection. Ideas and concepts cannot be owned by an individual and therefore cannot be copyrighted. Only the execution of those ideas -- provided the execution is original -- can be owned.
Pamela Berlin, former president of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, wrote an article about property rights in the May/June 2007 issue of the SSDC newsletter in which she attempted to clarify which elements of a director's work should be eligible for copyright protection. "We cannot own setting a play in a particular place or staging Hamlet in modern dress, but how these choices are executed in the fuller work...rises to the level of property rights.... A combination of stage movement can become so extensive as to be considered unique directorial property.... Copyright law does recognize choreography and pantomime as copyrightable. We consider blocking as 'choreography to words' or 'pantomime,' and this is what we are prepared to defend as property."
Copyrighting Choreography
For choreographers, it is a very simple process, at least theoretically, to copyright one's work on a theatrical production. As SSDC president Karen Azenberg explains, "You simply need to apply to the Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. They have a website which will tell you exactly what you need to submit. And there is no cost aside from the application fee. Choreographers in the concert-dance world copyright their works all the time, and even those in the theatre world do it with some regularity. The union encourages it. However, there is a complication, which involves what is currently a very hot-button issue: videotaping. Clearly the easiest way to copyright your choreography is by having a videotape of it, but there are many more limitations on videotaping dance in the commercial theatre than there are in the concert-dance world. It can get very complicated. There are so many different unions involved. And you're also using music and text, which can be copyrightable by other people." While the Copyright Office will also accept a notated score of a dance, dance notation can be an extremely costly and time-consuming undertaking. "So on the one hand," Azenberg says, "copyrighting theatre choreography is very straightforward, while on the other hand it can involve some very complex issues."
Although copyright protection for the stage movement created by directors is a much grayer area, "the SSDC believes that directors have the right to own their work," says Azenberg. "And by 'their work,' I mean the totality of the staging they've created for a whole production. Of course, no one owns 'Enter stage left' or any single movement or staging event. But a director's work that we feel should be copyrightable involves the entire physicalization of a show: the stage pictures, the physical flow, and the movements, particularly those not done to words."
While interest in copyrighting stage movement is certainly not something new -- SSDC founding member Agnes de Mille was cognizant of its importance to her work even before the union was formed in 1959 -- "it has become an increasingly more important issue of late because of the climate changes in the way that theatre is done," Azenberg explains. "Shows used to run a season and that was it. Now they run for years and years. Therefore, there are a lot of people who learn and understand that staging, and the cachet of being able to reproduce the Broadway staging at a local stock, regional, or community theatre has grown very large. And the SSDC thinks it's a great idea for the theatre community to be able to do that. But what we want is for the original creator to be credited and for license to use the work to be obtained from those creators."
Dramatists Disagree
But is copyrighting the best way to protect a director's original contributions? John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild of America, believes not. He says he harbors great respect for the central role a director plays in realizing an original Broadway production. He points out that it has been accepted practice for years for the "real A-list Broadway directors" to get a percentage of the playwright's subsidiary rights.
However, he notes, if directorial copyright became available, it would have to be extended to all directors of all productions of a work -- from Broadway to community theatres and high schools -- creating a situation that could severely limit the playwright's ability to have his or her work produced. Because many directorial copyrights could exist on a play, lawsuits (or their threat) could become commonplace. "Like many artists, playwrights included, directors can be prone to see their influence in the work of others, whether it's really there or not," says Weidman. "And the threat alone of legal action would lead producers to cancel productions. Theatrical production generally would shrink. Plays that have been seen freely for years would become significantly more difficult to produce."
Weidman also believes that directorial copyright would undermine the spirit of openness essential to the complex collaborative process of mounting an original show: "If directors wind up in a position where they're keeping score as to what they feel they're contributing versus what the playwright's ideas are, you run the risk of everyone becoming extra-careful and making sure what they say is marked as theirs. That kind of atmosphere is not conducive to the making of good theatre."
And what about the actors' contributions? Though invited to weigh in, Actors' Equity Association offered no official opinion on the subject. So what do you think? Should the stage movement created by directors be granted copyright protection? Share your views with me at ljsagolla@juno.com.