Adding stuff to shows

[soubrette]

Posted: 11/12/17 at 10:20pm

Updated On: 11/26/17 at 10:20 PM

[WestCoastActor/Director]

Posted: 11/12/17 at 11:24pm

You definitely have to have permission to change anything. That is completely in violation of the contract unless you have permission for changes in writing.

I saw a production of Grease where they rewrote it to become Eugene's story. They had Eugene now an older man looking back. They wrote all these monologues for him between the scenes. He starts talking when he worked in the cafeteria. I'm thinking you didn't work in the cafeteria. Next thing you knew there was a flashback of a teenage Eugene which (was another actor) working in the cafeteria. He and Pattie had married and they also had added you Eugene Jr. and Patty Junior as characters.

That was one of the most blatant all examples of illegally rewriting a show I have seen. He had a yearbook with him that he would be flipping through that evidently would flashback to the scenes of the Grease that we know. I guess by the end they got tired of writing monologues so he would walk out with the yearbook open up and look at the page of the audience but say nothing.

There are countless productions of You're A Goof Man Charlie Brown that they add a chorus and every Peanuts character probably ever written.

I'm assuming the licensing companies don't have the manpower to check up on every show. Often it's in a review or some kind of online post that the author gets wind of changes and that starts the legal ball rolling.

[soubrette]

Posted: 11/13/17 at 4:26pm

Thanks for your reply!
That production of Grease sounds ridiculous.! Why do they choose these shows if the’re going to mess with them, she asked rhetorically.
I heard of a production of Beauty and the Beast just this summer, where Belle kills Gaston!