Theater Law
In 1994, a theater outside Chicago mounted a production of The Most Happy Fella using the same star and renting the same sets from the Broadway production which ran two years earlier. The director of the Broadway production, Gerald Gutierrez, sued the Chicago production for plagiarizing Mr. Gutierrez’s stage directions.
In 1996, Joe Mantello, director of the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Terrence McNally’s play Love! Valour! Compassion!, sued a Florida regional theater for copying almost verbatim his staging of the play, including copying an opening tableau of the characters created by Mr. Mantello but not included in the original script.
In 2004, an Off-Off Broadway production titled Tam Lin fired its director during tech rehearsals. The show went on. The director sued not just to recover unpaid director fees but also for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for the production’s use of his stage directions, which he claimed were his copyrightable work.
In 2006, the creators and designers of the Broadway production of Urinetown! accused two regional productions of the show of plagiarizing their direction, choreography and design.
All of the cases cited above settled before trial. The unresolved question in each of these cases was whether stage directions in a theatrical production are even copyrightable. Under U.S. copyright law, every work is copyrightable if it is “original” and “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” Dance choreography has long enjoyed the presumption of copyright, but are stage directions really “fixed” and do they rise to a level of originality that is sufficient to achieve copyright protection? Perhaps more importantly should stage directions be copyrightable? Would this really “promote” the progress of the arts, which is the aim of copyright law? If stage directions are copyrightable, what are the potential repercussions for the theater community?
These questions and more will be addressed in a panel discussion with directors, playwrights, and lawyers at Wayne State University’s Hilberry Theatre at the next meeting of the Arts, Communications, Entertainment, and Sports (ACES) Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan on January 22, 2009 at 5:30 p.m. Please contact me if you are interested in attending.
–Matt
(Hat tip: Jesse Green, THEATER; Exit, Pursued by A Lawyer, N.Y. Times, Jan. 29, 2006.)
