Changing the ending of Rent — Page 5

I find it odd that a director of 11 years at this University, a published writer and a member of Actors Equity for 17 years, several years as a director in California...etc etc etc, 20 plus years directing all over the place..


has not once understood that when you get a contract from any of the very few licensing companies (MTI, Tams Witmark, Dramatists Play Service, etc) that the FINE PRINT in all of these contracts say you cannot change a thing.
Heck, most even tell you not to change gender casting.

It is BIzarre to me,...that's all. I can expect that from a novice director.
She may not have read this contract for RENT- but I would hope she has read a contract in the last 20 plus years of her directorial experience.

ALso---this 'artistic creativity' is nothing new or artistic.
Rumor and speculation of killing Mimi also arose during the last national tour of RENT with adam and anthony. it was buzzword for awhile--so maybe she read an article that 'inspired' her to do it.

but it's nothing new

Updated On: 4/27/11 at 03:57 PM

First off, as Namo as already pointed out, Mrs. Smith-Salty was not slandered when I changed her name to Satan.

I think, if true, it's a little disheartening that a college professor doesn't understand how a show is licensed, even if she didn't see the contract itself.

In speaking with the director it was a mistake to change it because she didn't know it would have been that bad

I don't understand what that means. It was a mistake because she did something she wasn't within her rights to do.

Why didn't she make these points in what she wrote to the paper?

And if Mr. Larson was around this then he would have seen this death all around himself because of that disease.

He was around then. That's when he wrote it. He was alive when he wrote the show.

And I'm not saying that he didn't purposefully want her to live. But it is a musical and they have to have happy endings.

That doesn't make sense.

I don't think that Larson is every character in ReNT, so just because one sings "anarchy" means he would advocate no constraints whatsoever on the work that he (and his silent collaborators) wrote. I would venture to guess that many composers who have had their works on Broadway "love[d] art." I don't see how you can leap from that to thinking that means that he'd want people to take what he wrote and do it any way they see fit.

To Robbie's point, copyright law is kind of arbitrary, but I don't think that suddenly means we're saying ReNt is the holiest of holies.

It used to be a lot easier to get away with this kind of stuff, before the internet and the layman's ability to become the copyright police. I don't know that it's a detriment or not. I don't think cutting a line or two is cause for people to flip out, unless you are cutting lines that completely change the dynamic of the show, as is the case with this production of ReNt. Mimi lives, and while that's something that's always kind of rankled me, that's the show. That's how it's supposed to be in the show.

To those of you who think that because Mimi died in La Boheme that it's okay to change the end of ReNt, do you advocate splitting the role of Angel into two? After all, that character is based on two characters from La Boheme.

Updated On: 4/27/11 at 04:04 PM

MY production of Xanadu will feature full frontal nudity and a gruesome death scene for Danny McGuire. The ending will feature the muses singing the title song while cannibalizing the corpse. Art is more than words on paper, people!

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Actually, Disney's been working tirelessly for decades to make sure nothing is ever in the public domain ever again.

I wish RENT would be so I could have Roger waking up and finding Mimi in the shower.

Mimi: Good morning, sleepyhead!

Roger: This place has a working shower??

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"With all due respect to Jonathon Larson, his version of the story is where the plot was changed."

Let's not forget, Larson did not change the opera La Boheme. He wrote is own show based on the opera La Boheme. Ms. Sadak changed a major plot point in an existing show, she did not write her own adaption.
I am flabbergasted that a college professor and a learning institution would do something so unprofessional and try to teach students that it is ok. I wonder if MTI will continue to license to them in the future.

"Let's not forget, Larson did not change the opera La Boheme. He wrote is own show based on the opera La Boheme. Ms. Sadak changed a major plot point in an existing show, she did not write her own adaption.
I am flabbergasted that a college professor and a learning institution would do something so unprofessional and try to teach students that it is ok. I wonder if MTI will continue to license to them in the future."

YES. Directors who make huge sweeping changes like this are just wanna-be writers who can't really write, so they fancy changing other's peoples' work instead of making their own.

There's a big difference between interpreting someone's work and changing it. If you're trying to do the latter, either get permission or write a new show. It's not your work to edit however you please.

^ lulz

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"In some ways, MTI can be Alexi Darling. And I honestly think he would encourage different interpretations of his show because he loved art. And if he is about anarchy then what they have done in the show is totally what Mr. Larson was writing about."

Ok, this is just ridiculous. The Larson family established the Jonathan Larson Grant in his memory, to use the royalties from Rent to provide financial grants to young composers. Yes, no one knows what he would have done had he lived, but in his place, his family is using that money to provide financial support for ACTUAL struggling artists. Not to mention numerous AIDS charities.

Or, since apparently you can only understand things in twisted Rent metaphors, MTI royalties are like Benny, using their money to pay for Angel's funeral and Mimi's rehab.

A bunch of spoiled college students and a salaried professor are certainly not anarchists sticking it to the man.

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Well, changed ending or not, Towson productions are to DIE FOR (pun intended). And now I'll have to buy my tickets for the matinee next weekend tonight even though I don't know how many people I'll have in the party, cause it will sell out. Sad thing is the Baltimore Sun has no one who covers theatre so no one gets props. So glad to see the theatre dept is getting publicity - good publicity would be better, though, such as the great news about the other spring show Kaspar, and the Kennedy Center competition.

I think we have learned something here. If you want to change the ending of a show - don't publicize it and definitely don't post it on the main Broadway Board of Broadway World.com.

These new posters joining the board to try and justify or excuse what in reality was the lack of respect for someone else's work, someone else's labor is just downright PATHETIC.

I think we have learned something here. If you want to change the ending of a show - don't publicize it and definitely don't post it on the main Broadway Board of Broadway World.com.

That's not what happened, though. I'd explain how it all unfolded, but I believe there's actually a thread.

I want to do a production of "Fiddler" where in the last scene, just as the family is about to leave Anatevka, a bunch of Cossacks come and ganng rape Shprintze and Bielke.

It's more realistic, and it's what the authors would have written today.

"So all I can think about is if he was alive, would he have let MTI take over his show?"


He almost undoubtedly would have because he wasn't a fool. If not MTI, then another licensing company. What composer wouldn't? It's not like MTI is the only licensing company that says 'you can't change the script'. By copyrighting Rent, Larson was saying "This is my property".

But then again- there is the issue, of course, of how much of that property he actually created..

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