Hunter Foster Responds to Urinetown Mess! — Page 2

I too wondered if there was any veracity to the thread starter. At first I thought that Second City was Hunter foster, but then I realized he/she wasn't. It was a little unclear.

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as i said in the other thread--i saw broadway AND chicago---we are talking EXACT,CARBON copy.
I agree with with whomever said Hunter is a) biased b) doesn't GET it and c) why the hell can't his wife write her own rebuttle!!

It's not about money--it's about art. It's like someone finding a painting and giving it to an art gallery and saying i painted it. Or someone else taking a screenplay taking off the persons name who wrote it and putting their own. You CAN"T do that! So what makes copying someone elses original choreography, step by step, and saying they made them up!!!
These are small productions--no ones going to make money--but the SSDC union is making THEIR point!!! And I think it's an importnat one to be made.

EXACTLY!

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The revival od A CHORUS LINE got "rave accolades"?
Did you read the New york Times?

A slippery slope indeed!

Both sides have their points.

You know, it's odd this is coming up--the bf and I were in Amsterdam last month and they have pay toiklets there too--with lady attendants like Miss Pennywise...they were mucgh cleaner granted, but I even talked to Greg about how seeing those changed my idea of what URINETOWN could look like--they had one that all metallic like a bus or airplane lav and they also had big huge sparkling white ones.

I think it serves directing and design teams to use their skills and creativity and find some new ideas within the context if the show--that's what they're SUPPOSED to do anyway, right? You can capture the spirit of any show and be original at the same time you know.

Odd thing is, Jen Cody's name is never mentioned in the NY Times Article (link in other thread).

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just to weigh in here.

1) As someone who has directed before, certain shows can be difficult to reinvent in every way and many times you find that you are doing a diservice to the production by changing the original staging.

2) I would argue that most people who want to direct or choreograph do so because they want to express themselves in some way and they believe they might have a certain talent for it. Nobody in their right mind goes in thinking, "I'm going to steal the original choreography and take credit for it. Being a choreographer or a director is too hard to pursue to want to do it solely for the credit. It's not a job that makes you famous. You do it because you want to do it. That being said, one could imagine a situation where one found that they were in over one's head. Not enough time. Not enough experience. And so they were forced to borrow from what he/she knew. Some of this may have been inadvertent and some not.

3) The fact is, it's a grey area and I believe it is too difficult to determine what imprint the director as left on a production. If I see a production of Hamlet and the director had the Hamlet cry in act one scene 2 and I had never seen it done that way before.... then I direct a production and have my Hamlet do that, is that really theft? I think, not. As for staging, there are only so many ways to block something. And really only a few ways to do it effectively. Choreography is a bit different as it is a sequence of steps and there is usually a bit more variation and looseness to what might be done. And if I saw a producition with an entire dance number taken from some other production, I would hope that they would give credit in the playbill to that person (though not necessarily compensation). That being said, there are many numbers in musicals that were written for a specific style of dance and it can be very difficult to veer away from what was done. Take the score to Pippin for instance. Those numbers and dance arrangements were written for Fosse. It is very difficult to stray too far from what was originally intended and I do not believe one should change something just for the sake of changing. Take War is A Science -- try doing it without the knee slapping business in some form. now maybe there's a way to do this if you're incredibly imaginative, but I have seen numerous productions where they tried to something else and, frankly, it did not work as well.

When you purchse the right to sing a song in a wedding band let's say, you can use whatever arrangement you like. There's nothing that says you can have the melody and the lyric but you MUST use your own arrangement and it must be different fromt he original. These things are inextricably linked and, though not always, they can be inextricably linked in a musical. I dare anyone to come up with a better staging of Les Miserables.

The heart of the matter is this -- The original director and choreographer should perhaps be getting a royalty from any productions of their shows (and maybe they do, I don't know). But any production should feel free to take what they please from whatever they have seen. Everything is derivative and it is IMPOSSIBLE to define what is okay and what isn't. The royalty houses should take this into account and distribute compensation accordingly.

I saw the Akron, OH production...at the largest professional dinner theatre, not small.

http://www.carouseldinnertheatre.com

I got to meet Jen, as well. The situation is a shame.

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Considering Urinetown is done so often these days, it might be a nice break.

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"Taking too many liberties" probabvly meens RE-WRITING - changing the words, cutting sections, adding new stuff. That it totally illegal. That is the only reason MTI would deny someone rights.

The FACT is that none of us know the full story and details. It could be something as simple as, whoever printed the programs screwed up and didn't list the original creative team.

I thinks it's silly that they are making a big deal over this.

When you go to see Oklahoma!, you expext to see fields of corn and maybe a surry with fringe on it. When you go to see Carousel, there is always some sort of carousel on stage.

The only way the director is going to win his court case is to prove that these other creative teams copied EVERY aspect of the show and KNOWINGLY did not credit the original team, which is going to be impossible to prove.

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Here's what nobody seems to be getting--having a carousel onstage isn't the same as having a COPY of the Hytner production's carousel on stage. Yes, you can have fields of corn for OK!, but there's no reason why someone else's work should be copied.

I know that most of you are saying "what does it hurt?" and the truth is, nobody. But "designers" and "directors" are passing off someone's else's ideas as their own. If you want to have a URINETOWN that looks and feels like the original, just say so and give the folks credit.

If you use Bennett's choreo for ACL, then you are not a choreographer but a dance director. This is a matter of gviing credit where it's due.

That's a valid question, Hanna...but I'd think if they were looking for BIG bucks they wouldn't be looking at the AKRON production, you know?

I'm not sure about how the money is given to the creative team, though I can speak from what little experience I have: with Grease, the director and choreog. were paid royalties for the ENTIRE run of the tour (3 years), despite the fact that changes had been made by the producers.

Now it may be up to the writers to secure those royalties when they sign with a licensing agent, but it IS their work, make no mistake.

I just DO NOT for the life of me understand why a self-described director or designer would WANT to outright copy the original--and in the case of URINETOWN, how many people even know the show? There's no film with which to compare, like WSS or ACL or any of the other shows mentioned--so it's not as if the audience has any preconceived ideas about what the show looks like.