Links I've been sitting on for far too long

In somewhat chronological, post-Christmas order:

• Collaboraction Collaboration artist extraordinaire Nick Keenan, in response to an item on Rob Kozlowski's Christmas wish list, actually did something: he created a Google Calendar for Chicago theater opening nights. If he can get Chicago theaters to really update it, it'll be a hugely useful tool for theaters, critics, and Tiny Tims everywhere.
• While we're on the subject of raw data, Garrett Eisler figured out some things about how Broadway shows, including August: Osage County, are actually doing.
• In further numbers, Scott Walters looked at the seasons of the major regional theaters and discovered that they're all doing a dismaying number of revivals.
• Furthermore, Isaac has more in his series of posts on intellectual property.
• And if you still want more, I got an anonymous email last week from somebody who had anonymous things to say about the Urinetown mess. Since it was also delivered to the inbox of PerformInk editor Carrie Kaufman, I'll post it here as a letter to the editor, with no commentary either way, after the jump.

THE URINETOWN LAWSUITS:

By Anonymous

A case of copycat productions or conspiracy?

The first of the Urinetown lawsuits has settled out of court in Chicago, Illinois with the Akron Ohio case still pending. Some interesting facts about the case that could prove more to this than meets the eye:

COPYCAT:

In November of 2006, members of the Broadway production of Urinetown claimed that two productions of the musical in Akron Ohio and Chicago Illinois plagiarized their creative contributions to the show. They threatened to sue using the SSDC and USA as their platforms. Both regional productions sued them first for declaratory judgments and defamation claims. The authors who worked with the Chicago production on the show remained silent and Hunter Foster, Broadway star of the show and wife of Jen Cody, director of the Akron production defended that production publicly.

COPYRIGHT:

The following information is in the court documents in the Northern District of Illinois and the Northern District of Ohio court records. In the spring of 2007 the U.S. Copyright Office and the Department of Justice entered the case on the side of the regional productions. The copyright office denied in full John Rando’s copyright for stage direction and deemed stage direction not copyrightable by U.S. copyright law. The choreographer, John Carrafa registered a copyright for choreography thru a DVD of the Broadway production. Currently the DVD specimen has been removed from the copyright records and is now in “legal review” within the supervising examiners office. The conflict in question is that the dance sequences contain many elements borrowed from other choreographers and may not be 100% original which is the first law of copyright for choreography. Gregory Gale the assistant costumer on the off-Broadway production went on to become the costumer of the Broadway production. The original designs of the show were created by the late Jonathan Bixby and Gale falsely tried to gain a copyright for costume design. Scott Pask the scenic designer was issued a copyright for his set design and Brian MacDevitt was issued a copyright as author of a lighting cue book on the musical. He was denied a design copyright for lighting. The designers union, USA which stands for United Scenic Artist filed a motion to be dismissed from the case on three counts concerning copyright infringement and defamation, they were successful on the first two counts but were denied the last count concerning defamation.

CONSPIRACY:

According to the authors, Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis and Carol Edelson, president of the licensing house, Music Theatre International, both sides were asked by the executive director of the SSDC, Barbara Hauptman and the five members of the creative team on more than three occasions to come to the table and renegotiate the licensing contract to include the five members of the Broadway creative team into the royalty package on Urinetown. They threatened that if they were not given their share they would go public with their claims and in doing so bring harm to the show. Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis both can be reached for comment.

Comments

[dianna]

Kudos to Nick for getting it done! And thanks to you Kris for spreading the word!