>>
Is Disney aware? Depends on how high a profile the producing company chooses to go. I know they're watching TCR's production (reps from both Disney and the licensing company are supposedly coming to the opening), but the rest of these -- it's just a question of folks feeling they won't get caught. It's sorta like the karaoke version of WICKED that's going on sale: small companies that fly below the radar use these things to put on bootleg productions and pray they won't get caught. More often than not, they succeed, because the folks who control the rights can't be everywhere at once.
But remember how tightly the rights to JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR were controlled when it was released just as a concept album? You had church groups all over the country trying to copy the music off the album and putting it on as a show, and MTI (I think) had a bitch of a time trying to keep that one contained, spending hundreds of thousands in shutting these folks down. Large-scale popular shows that are (seemingly) easy to produce, like BEAUTY and WICKED, are gonna go through the same flurry of productions at the outset.
When it comes to design, we had our own series of discussions at TCR about how close we could come to the film without getting busted. Belle has to wear a yellow dress. Lumiere has to look a certain way. The Beast has to have a blue jacket -- at least that's what we thought. But now we're going in a totally new way, one to make the production completely our own... but it hasn't been easy convincing the artistic staff that it's okay to venture out like that.
"That duck was a sexual toy, and it was on display!" -- an unknown Nashville town leader