weebelly.com

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.

Whose getting Pissed 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.

I really enjoy this play by Mike Sepesy, as well as the follow-up: The Douglas Tree.  There were things I liked about the production and things that I did not.  Mostly the things I didn’t like revolved around the sneaking suspicion that Mike wasn’t given the resources that his play deserved.  I don’t want to be an ass and make obnoxious suppositions, but I’ll say that I’ve seen two season-level productions at CPT by local playwrights: The Alice Seed and The Stars Fell All Night, (and some others that weren’t billed this way) and I don’t think either was served very well by the production it received.  The directors were either found or acquired last minute, the sets were questionable, and the productions seemed rushed, the choices made were wrong, etc.  I’ve seen other productions at CPT that were of good quality: Boom, Fefu and Her Friends, Our Town, etc, so why, I wonder, not the local playwrights? (Excepting the caveat of Cut to Pieces, which was very well done.)  It may be that the plays may be viewed as extensions of the process by which they come up: little box, big box, production–and resources are allocated lightly in the first two.  If that is the case, then the evolution of resources needs tweaked.  Otherwise, I may have to speculate on some other cause…

Grieving parents struggle in Sepesy's The Alice Seed

I saw a reading of Mike’s play at the Cleveland Play House in 2007. That was an interesting process, as they actually used music stands.  This was thankfully not the way that Clyde approached my reading in Little Box; but even with this restricted process Mike’s writing came through.  It came through strongly again in the production I saw.

The Alice Seed is a play about grief.  The play is draining.  It is well-written and hard to watch.  As a playwright who has written texts that involve draining themes and intense interactions between characters, there are things I might tweak in this play, as the confrontations between husband and wife can become circular and border on tiresome–they weren’t, but there were moments when I began to think, “okay, we’ve been through this…”  And I was afraid it might go into tiresome; but Mike is a good writer and his sense of that is acute. As well, life is like that, and this story is a tough one.

This play is a screenplay–or should be.  I would love it as a movie/film.  There are things that it needs that are difficult on stage–that is, resources need to be allocated.  They were not.  This required an active imagination on the part of the audience.  I think most people were in this space, at least the people I heard from, and this is what theater should be: imaginative. This is not a play that requires a natural/realistic set; but having some pieces set that way would have helped.  The putting green Astroturf was a distraction, and it disturbed the scenes that took place in the house.  I would much rather the set have been a house with a pretense toward the woods, than the reverse that it was.

The one scene that went way over the top for me was the doctor scene.  A doctor comes to the middle of the stage and we seen the dire diagnosis directed toward Alice. She has cancer.  The dramatics that were attached to this announcement were excessive and unnecessary.  The doctor was reduced to an evil machine that kept repeating ‘your daughter has cancer’ with ominous echoes provided by two musicians (chorus?) above.  The starkness and lighting cast the doctor character with a villainy that shifted the focus away from the grief and bordered on editorial.  The theatrics, being way over the top, distracted from the course of the play.  The effect was almost comic.  I understand the emphasis: that this was the moment when things went bad for the family.  But it was played with too heavy a hand.

Other theatrical points were wonderful.  The hands of Alice reaching out of the ground, cast as shadows on the upstage wall were great.  I liked the effect of the trees on the set.  The musicians: shout out to Bobby Williams of con-con fame, where impressive and the sound effects they provided were often very well done.  The one caveat here being the voice of Alice and the really unnecessary “see you soon, mommy” comment.  The first scene with the mother, Dolores (Jackie Cummins), in the woods and the atmosphere and “swamp” sounds, was one of the best for me and still is with me as a strong impression.
Mike draws very strong characters and the best, perhaps, is Paul (Michael Andrews-Hinders) whose fierce moral system and sense of himself is amazing: and the ominous scene between Paul and Dolores in the house, after Judah (Mark Mayo) has run off, is drawn in hard relief and edged with deep threat and menace.  Sepesy hit his target hard here.

Mike’s sense of storytelling is equally compelling.  He knows balance.  He knows how to heighten the tension and release it.  He knows how to bring you down into the emotional trauma, and then return you with light-hearted moments.

In her notes on the play, Alison Garrigan (who directed and is herself a fine actress) comments that there are “conjure-wive” tales from Appalachia that serve as cautionary tales.  This has that element certainly, with Dolores dying in the end over a promise she made to get her dear Alice back.  When I talked with Mike after the show, I asked him if that was in the reading at the Play House: Dolores dying.  He said it was, but that she should be pulled under the ground with Alice at the end (which did not happen as there was no drop floor/trap constructed for the production). I forgot about this ending, and I think, while I understand that it does serve that cautionary purpose, a stronger story has Dolores and Judah going forward together.  I think a more haunting ending is that there is no easy way out and the loss must be endured forever.  As I get older I realize there are some things that happen in life, some damages, that cannot be undone and from which one cannot recover: that people can get broken and not be fixable.  That is deeply sad and deeply frightening.  I know if something happened to either of my children, something deep inside me would break forever; so the grief in The Alice Seed rings true. In terms of a horror story, I think this reality–the living–is the one that is truly awful–that is to say, I wish Dolores wouldn’t die; even though that detracts from the “contractual” supernatural event.

I love seeing Sepesy’s plays: he is funny, draws startling characters (is himself an excellent reader and character voice), and has a profound mythic sense when it comes to theater and a strong sense of theatrics in the theater space.  I hope CPT considers The Douglas Tree and provides the resources to make it a truly fine production–and I look forward to Mike’s new filmic work.