Well the Second National Tour is ending on Sunday, so it shouldn't be long now. Amateur rights for a show are only available when there is not a large professional production (i.e. Broadway, off-Broadway, National tours, etc.) going on.
There are no plans for another national tour so the rights are going to be released really soon.
They have already been giving out the rights. The first non professional production will be in New Jersey in August. I know of productions of the show that will be going on all the way up to next Spring.
Sorry Dumbo you are mistaken. They will only restrict performances if the tour is going to be within a certain distance to your produciton within a certain time frame. Although under most circumstances, they won't release amatuer rights until the FIRST Nat'l tour is over. (assuming that the original run is no longer on b'way.)
About 10 years ago, my HS was granted the rights to Grease and had them pulled because a tour would have been coming to Boston around the same time.
If timing were different, or they were only going to Providence, nothing would have changed. Case in point, a few years later, we did Les Miz (among some of the first HS to do so.) and only a few weeks before our date a tour was in Providence.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
Based on the one place in my state that is doing it already, it's only going to the highest-caliber local theatres that typically get the rights to shows first.
"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."-Stephen Sondheim