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The Register denies that stage direction, as presented to the Copyright Office for registration, is copyrightable subject matter…[the] Register properly refused copyright registration for Mr. Rando’s claim concerning stage direction.

So reads a Department of Justice motion from 2007 regarding the claim by a deranged Broadway director and the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers (SSDC) that the rather common and unoriginal “choreography and pantomime” contributed to a Urinetown production be protected (and hence paid for) by other companies producing a play he happened to work on.

I suppose I am old enough now that I should not be surprised by the depravity of human beings and their actions, but I am continually amazed, newly, again and again, by the lengths that people will go to satisfy their voracious greed.

The case I’m discussing here is another case mentioned by Ralph Sevush when he spoke at the Dramatist Guild National Conference this past week.  It involves cease and desist letters sent to Akron and Chicago theaters producing Urinetown, asserting that John Rando’s rights were being infringed. To my mind, this case is an example of the most egregious and insidious of the SSDC activities.  In fact, if I were a Choreographer in that particular society I would be protesting the activities of the society for even pursuing cases that attempt to inflate the work of some of these directors to that of choreography.  Especially given the list of “creative” additions that this John Rando attempted to copyright:

• Using red scarves pulled from the actors’ pockets when they are shot to signify blood

Really?  That’s your copyrightable creative contribution?  Attempting to copyright a stage action that has been done in countless children’s theater productions, such that the number of scarves could stretch from NY to LA?  Hell, I believe that technique was used in the movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead back in 1990.  God knows, of course, how many years, decades, or centuries it has been used prior to that.

• Using the chorus to march and fight in slow motion for comedic purposes.

??? oh, I get it. ha ha.

• Having the supporting actors follow the lead actor upstage and downstage as he delivers an inspirational speech;

???

• Having a dead character speak when his final words are being communicated by a live character;

Oh, you mean, being theatrical?

• Using blue fabric stretched across the stage to symbolize a river;

Like that’s never been done.

• Using a moveable ladder and rowing gestures by actors to indicate characters rowing a boat.

Really?

I would heartily laugh at all of this if it weren’t for the presumption that Rando and his group of half-wits have actually attempted to place this crap in the legal domain and inhibit the production of a work elsewhere in the country.  In fact, as the article points out, Carousel Theater in Akron has gone out of business and who know to what extent this toxic power grab by John Rando contributed to their demise.  The needless, rapacious, voracious, and greedy lawsuit is precisely the sort of putrid sludge that is destroying this country.  I’d wrap myself in a flag and stand silently, but Rando would probably sue me for infringing on one of his stage pictures.

Now is the time when I disclaim.  I know directing is a creative activity.  I know it requires men and women with tireless energy, commitment, and the ability to marshal a tempestuous collection of variables and make them all cohere.  Many is the director I have watched marveling at their political ability with regard to handling tense and tricky situations, their command ability in getting all the variables to listen and move and perform as instructed.  Many is the director I have admired for his perseverance and fortitude in doing a scene over and over and over.  I understand that a good director can make a show or break one.  I know many directors and have found each of them to be warm, charitable, generous, funny people. People that I like being around. However, all THIS BEING SAID, directors are paid to get a script off a page.  As Sevush explicitly pointed out in his talk, directors are hired by producers to do a job.  THE STAGING of the play is THEIR JOB.

Directors (in this case) are members of a Society that PAYS them, including BENEFITS.  They are immune to the risk that writers necessarily have to take (if I write a script and no one produces it, I just spent a year or more with no result for my work). For this director to seek some sort of creative attachment to a work above and beyond that for which he has been justly compensated is flat out rapacious, unwarranted, and delusional.  It demonstrates concretely that the Tony Award and Broadway compensation was not enough: Rando needed to take from each and every future production of the show, even though he has contributed to that future production nothing, 0, zilch.  Sure, you say, but people at Carousel Dinner Theater go to Urinetown to see the Broadway show, which is Rando’s staging.  Perhaps. I might say, instead, that people go to Carousel to see Urinetown as it was created by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis–the LEGITIMATE AUTHORS. Rando may have won the Tony, but his interpretation of Urinetown is only possible by his interpretation of what is ALREADY in the SCRIPT.  And any director has the right to re-create that, only limited by his/her ability.

An even more egregious portion of this story is the suggestion that Rando took elements of his production from original director Joseph McDonnell’s New York Fringe production–thus making Rando a hypocrite.  Further, as Sevush points out, the action by the SSDC is so demonstrably selfish on the part of one person (Rando) that it puts other directors in a position where they will have to fight with him regarding the staging of the same play.  Talk about a vision squarely focused on the “me.”

The original copyright application sent in 2006 by Rando’s representatives “were for the sets, lighting, choreography and ‘stage directions’ for Urinetown.”  One must wonder, by this wording, if Rando wasn’t attempting to copyright the already-created stage directions in the script; perhaps even the set descriptions, presuming they’re in the script–which I would assume they would be.  I would also assume, by this application, that Rando was responsible for the scenic design and light design, otherwise he’s stepping on the territory of other creative artists who are associated with theatrical productions.  One must wonder just how much farther along it would have to go before Rando and the SSDC simply asserted that the whole of Urinetown was infact their creation and idea from start to finish!

Thank God, per the opening, the Copyright Office and the Department of Justice stepped in to say, firmly, that stage directions are not copyrightable.

Stage directions ARE NOT copyrightable.

Let’s all say that a few hundred times together.

Unfortunately, the suits in Akron and Chicago were settled.  That is, they didn’t go to court where a judgment could be reached to become firm precedent. Sevush posits and then answers the terribly depressing question: “Why were they settled?”

Sevush: “As anyone who has ever been involved in a law suit knows, litigants with deep pockets can prolong a court case, whether their position has merit or not.  And they can almost always force a litigant without deep pockets to settle a case which has become, quite simply, too expensive to pursue.”

So everyone send a happy thank you letter to John Rando and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers for their embarrassingly unabashed attempt to steal creative content that is not their own, hamstring productions of other people’s work, and for holding up (like highway robbers) productions to which they lay envious claim.

Went and saw Insomnia at CPT last week (or maybe two weeks) with Jordan Davis. Had a real good time and enjoyed the show at CPT thoroughly.

 

Insomnia proves again why the combination of Raymond Bobgan and Chris Seibert is powerful. POWERFUL. Tack on Holly Holsinger who can thoroughly dominate (as both an actor and director) and you’ve got some seriously muscular theater, which Insomnia is. Both Bobgan and Seibert demonstrate again (also Holsinger) why the organic process that they use to create inspired productions works and works well. Their exploration of personal story, myth, and religion works on the level of the unconscious leaving one with the peculiar sensation of having slept well and dreamed. And their exploration and use of space, acting techniques, sound, lighting, as well as in the more physical aspects of comic theater give the mind’s eye a feast of stage images to connect with the psionic elements.

The play opens in the attic of a house, which is of course suggestive of the psychological landscape in which the play’s action will take place. At first I wondered if the piece weren’t somewhat like Albee’s Three Tall Women, with each woman representing a different phase of life for the “main” character. I initially thought that this “main” character, in terms of focus, was Holsinger’s character (Ev) but it became quickly clear that Seibert’s character (Zelda) represented an imaginary friend or invisible playmate; and that the “main” character might be Evelyn (Anne McEvoy), who comes up the stairs from the “real” world below.

Seibert as Zelda plays a magnificently manic playmate who reminded me all-too-well of my daughter: with endless pulses of energy and a ruthless and relentless desire to play something regardless of my own lack of interest. Zelda made manifest that constant pushing and prodding that children do so well, as well as a deceptively naïve sweetness that became sharply brutal and precise in a flashing turn. Holsinger lives up to her name by singing frequently throughout the piece, showing off a lovely, deep voice and from the program it appears that the songs are original.

The physical aspects of the production (presentational) are tremendous. At the outset there is only Holsinger on stage, but soon there is thumping inside a trunk which was perhaps overlooked by the audience (was by me) from which Seibert emerges, playfully. She uses a croquet mallet as a periscope and then dances across the stage. Holsinger and Seibert play dress-up and enact the rapid-fire characters and dialogue of a circa 1930s/40s movie, like It Happened One Night or His Girl Friday. In an inspired dream sequence Seibert becomes an elemental force from another plane, cloaked in a diaphanous flowing garment—a resplendent ghost.

Equally strong is the sense/meaning of loss and reckoning in the play; the terrible sense of having settled and having not fulfilled a potential. The sense that life has become mundane and polite; a place that is all too easy for each of us to fall into and to which to become accustomed. If we are not careful and watchful we are at risk of taking much for granted: our life path, the people around us, and perhaps worst of all, our own selves. Insomnia addresses this head long and with an unflinching gaze; so much so that one might lose sleep at the horrifying confrontation.

Not to close on a down note, but I want to get off my chest the fact that I did not like the ending of the piece. There are several reasons for this, but the two biggest include that it 1) broke the frame of the play (with Holsinger going around and out to talk with the audience) and 2) it attempted to but a bow on a play that was best left unwrapped. I understand the impulse. In talking with Jordan Davis afterward we discussed that one great difficulty in this type of piece is that it is very difficult to close off. In my own work I often confront this problem and flinch in the face of providing a neat ending—it is too much for me to bear. I believe Insomnia could end when Holsinger’s Ev is revealed as being the “main” character and walks confidently out of the attic closing the door to descend to the remains of her (old?) life below. The powerful sense that there will be change is comparable to that of Nora slamming the door at the end of Ibsen’s play. I don’t know if there was too much of a sense that perhaps people would miss the resolution of that, or if that was not concrete enough resolution, or if there needed to be some clarification. I didn’t think so, and to me it undermined the power of what came before.

Cut to Pieces, another fabulous piece about which I cannot say enough is coming back soon to CPT and I can’t wait to see it.

After Insomnia, Jordan and I went to Happy Dog and heard The New Soft Shoe, which does covers of Gram Parsons. It was a pretty cool show and we sat with some friends of Jordan’s, one of whom, strangely enough, was a graduating Case student who was in Gilbert Doho’s theater class when I went to speak to them about my play Patterns. Small world.