Amateur Wicked productions

I direct musicals at the high school where I teach. Yesterday, I was having a conversation with some of my incoming seniors about shows they would like to produce next year. I am quite used to kids, even the mega-theater-geek kids, asking to do Wicked and Lion King in particular. And I always say the rights aren't available, and that's it.
But yesterday my girls insisted that they know many people who have been in amateur productions of Wicked, and that next year's high school theater festival is doing Wicked. They also knew of several universities that have produced it. I told them that none of that could possibly be true, and I reminded them what big news (in the theater community at least) when Les Miz and Phantom had their amateur rights sent out, and especially when the first schools produced pilot productions of those shows. I told them any amateur production of Wicked would be just as scrutinized and publicized. I wonder if this is just a case of a school putting on a talent/variety show that featured a song from Wicked and then somebody turning that into "My school produced Wicked." I was only able to find one purportedly middle school production of Wicked on youtube.
Does anybody on this board know of any clandestine amateur Wicked productions out there? Normally I just dismiss students when they say this, but they number of schools they mentioned as performing as well as specific names, etc, made me wonder that maybe I somehow missed the news..........

I'm curious if anyone knows of a school that put on a full, unlicensed production of Wicked.

I would never direct an illegal show. These seniors seemed so confident that these amateur productions have happened that it made me wonder if somehow a few pilot productions went under the radar.

The Wicked script is readily available online. I imagine the sheet music is there too. I guess the theater departments at these schools don't take licensing seriously. I have to wonder if they do pay for rights when they produce one that is available.

No such thing as an authorized "Wicked Jr." or any sort of authorized amateur production. No pilot production. Any production that your students know of is illegal. They (Your students) might not know the difference. There is no licensing available for Wicked.

Updated On: 4/18/14 at 01:06 PM

I guess middle school drama teachers don't know about licensing?
Another middle school?

Depending on how much more this school did, they may have tried to stay within the perceived "3 songs" rule. And they had the good sense not to call it "Wicked" - but to claim a copyright on it????
High School Bits and Pieces

There's an illegal production of The Book of Mormon (using blackface) going on in Brazil, so anything is possible!
https://www.facebook.com/bomunirio/photos_stream

---

Surely a phone call to the school[s] in questions' drama dept. would give you an immediate answer.

That's not blackface. That production looks bigger than the Broadway one.

Ooops. Double post.

Updated On: 4/18/14 at 01:47 PM

Just an idea, but I know my school often does "original productions" (yuck) that are essentially just jukebox musicals, with songs from all sorts of shows. In 2012, we did a modern day version of Cinderella, and we used Popular and Defying Gravity at different points in the show. Some of these may be that - particularly that one where Elphaba isn't even green.

---

Emma White, what you did was completely illegal and I ask that anyone reading Emma's post to NOT take it at face value and to completely disregard it. By performing dramatic representations of the songs, you have in fact broken the law. Not to mention... you'd have to get clearance to perform any song from "Wicked" by its copyright holders and I never see them signing off on that.