BY Kerry Reid
Lauren Schroeder in CIC’s production of Mr. Marmalade.
If you’ve been perusing the theatre listings lately and wondering if you’ve developed double vision, fear not: it’s not your eyes.
In the past two months, two different Chicago non-Equity companies staged overlapping productions of the same play. That’s four theatre, two plays. Actors Workshop Theatre in Edgewater opened a production of Simon Gray’s corrosive 1975 comedy, Otherwise Engaged, on Jan. 26, which was followed by Steep Theatre’s staging of the same play on Feb. 15 (that production ran through March 24). And on March 22, Chemically Imbalanced Comedy opened the local premiere of up-and-coming New York-based playwright Noah Haidle’s 2005 off-Broadway hit, Mr. Marmalade, at the Cornservatory on Lincoln Avenue – a few weeks ahead of the Dog & Pony Theatre Company’s production at the Storefront Theatre, which opens April 5.
Dieterich Gray and Kelly O’Sullivan in Dog & Pony’s production of Mr. Marmalade.
How is this possible? Well, the short answer is that nonprofessional, or “amateur” rights as they are sometimes called, are nonexclusive. That means that the two most prominent dramatic licensing agencies – Samuel French, Inc. and Dramatists Play Service – do not guarantee that non-Equity companies will have the only production in their region. Even if, as in the case of the Haidle script, the play has never been produced locally.
In the case of the Gray play, which is licensed through Samuel French, both Actors Workshop Theatre artistic director Michael Colucci and Steep Theatre executive director Peter Moore were not troubled by the fact that their productions would be running in overlap for a couple of weeks.
The play was the first one produced by AWT back in 1994 and Colucci had long wanted to revisit it. He offered the role of Beth to Lauren Goode last summer, who was then appearing in Steep’s production of Bang the Drum Slowly. According to Colucci, when Moore heard about Actors Workshop’s plans from Goode, he called Colucci to let him know that Steep also planned to open the Gray show in winter 2007 and had already obtained the nonprofessional rights through Samuel French. The two men agreed that their North Side audience bases (Steep operates in a storefront space just south of Irving Park Road on Sheridan, next door to the Red Line el stop) were different enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, longtime Steep artistic associate Jim Poole ended up playing the lead role of Simon Hench in the AWT production.
Said Colucci in an e-mail, “I felt this potentially problematic issue was handled quite thoughtfully all-around, and I’m sure you know, that’s not always the case in situations like these.”
For his part, Moore says that he had “heard a rumor” that AWT was looking at the play, checked the company’s Web site, and didn’t see anything on it, so he went ahead and obtained the rights through Samuel French. He describes his call to Colucci as “a heads-up, by no means asking him not to do it.” Notes Moore, “The crazy thing is that I don’t think anyone has done it in quite a while in Chicago.”
Neither Moore nor Colucci recalls anyone at Samuel French giving them a heads-up that another nonprofessional company had already obtained rights for the show in the same time period. Nor do they recall getting a heads-up from the League of Chicago Theatres, though Ben Thiem, the League’s director of member services, says that he did notify the companies of the overlap when he noticed it in their season announcements.
In the case of Chemically Imbalanced Comedy and Dog & Pony, the issue is decidedly thornier, in part because of conflicts Chemically Imbalanced had with two other productions earlier in the planning process. Angela McMahon, executive producer for Chemically Imbalanced, read Haidle’s scabrous comedy about Lucy, a little girl with an unsavory imaginary friend (the role of Lucy was originated by Mamie Gummer, daughter of Meryl Streep), when it was published in the February 2005 issue of American Theatre. McMahon had originally hoped to produce the show in September 2006, but was denied nonprofessional rights by Dramatists Play Service because of the local professional debut of Haidle’s play Vigils at the Goodman in October.
McMahon then obtained nonprofessional rights to Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and announced it as part of the company’s 2006-07 season. However, when she contacted the League to schedule a “Theatre Thursday” event with the Durang play, she was informed that Infamous Commonwealth Theatre Company had already scheduled an event with the same show during the same time period. CIC decided to go with another Durang play, The Vietnamization of New Jersey, which, though dating from the 1970s, had never been produced locally (though it did open in a New York revival in January of this year).
Says McMahon, “When I contacted Dramatists to ask them about the duplicate rights for Betty’s Summer Vacation, they said that they don’t protect amateur rights. They only worry about professional rights.”
That could not be confirmed with the play licenser. Lack of response on the part of Dramatists Play Service seems to be standard operating procedure. PerformInk made numerous attempts to contact Craig Pospisil, director of nonprofessional rights, and his assistant Danna Call, for comment for this article. They did not return calls or e-mails.
The earlier Durang play ended up doing well for Chemically Imbalanced, in part because they participated with Infamous Commonwealth, Next Theatre, and Oracle Productions in the “Fall of Durang” cross-marketing initiative, which highlighted the fact that all four companies were producing Durang shows in the fall of 2006 and offered discounts to audience members who saw the other Durang pieces.
McMahon then went ahead and obtained the rights in August 2006 for a winter production of Mr. Marmalade, and announced the show in PerformInk’s season preview issue of Sept. 15. Which is where Dog & Pony enters the picture.
Krissy Vanderwarker, artistic director for Dog & Pony, says that her company first did a reading of Haidle’s play in spring of 2005, and obtained the rights in March 2006. The company, which is itinerant, had been in talks with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs about taking a slot at the Storefront, and their proposal to stage Mr. Marmalade there was formally accepted in May 2006.
“We knew that we were applying for the nonprofessional rights,” says Vanderwarker. “We had no illusions that they were exclusive. We had no idea that they would allow two productions at the same time, especially since we are a company devoted to doing new work. Our funding depends on that, our identity is based on premiering new work in Chicago.” The company has, among other productions, staged the local premieres of two Sheila Callaghan plays, Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) and Dead City.
Upon reading the PerformInk season preview issue, Vanderwarker noticed that Chemically Imbalanced also planned to do the show and she contacted McMahon, who, though sympathetic, was not interested in re-jiggering her season yet again. “They contacted me and said, ‘We got a grant for doing the Chicago premiere,’” says McMahon. “Understandably, they’re upset that this is happening. They said, ‘We’ve already publicized this.’ And I said, ‘Well, so did we. You read about it.’”
The situation for these two companies is exacerbated by the fact that neither has much flexibility in when they can produce. Chemically Imbalanced is in residence at the Cornservatory and mostly does late-night shows – they have to schedule their mainstage offerings around those of their landlord, Corn Productions.
“If I wanted to run this as a late-night show, I’m not going to get the Jeff committee, and I’m not getting the same audience,” says McMahon. And as noted, Dog & Pony had already booked a slot with the Storefront Theatre.
The conventional wisdom might dictate that whichever show opens first will have the publicity edge. But McMahon notes that there is a tendency on the part of theatre editors to run side-by-side reviews of simultaneous productions, which might harm her Marmalade if they don’t get reviewed until later in the run. She says she did approach Dog & Pony about doing some cross marketing similar to the “Fall of Durang,” but they turned her down.
Says Vanderwarker, “We don’t see a huge benefit to that [for us]. It’s not because of any sort of negativity. We hope that our success in the past and the fact that we’re in the Storefront will help. We’re hoping from the media perspective that people will come and treat the show with the same critical eye that they would have under normal circumstances. Everyone’s goal is to give the public a better idea of what they should be spending time and money to see. We’re not really interested in fostering a competition.”
The League doesn’t keep a master season schedule, though they do maintain the opening nights calendar. “We sent our show forms to the League as soon as we heard from [DCA],” says McMahon. “This was locked and loaded long before. I’m not sure how to avoid this situation in the future unless there was some sort of citywide dialogue. And that seems unviable, since people are always vying for new scripts.”
McMahon notes that when they were first planning Mr. Marmalade for fall 2006, they found out that BackStage Theatre Company had also hoped to do the show. And Vanderwarker tried to get the nonprofessional rights for Rolin Jones’s The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, but was turned down because Collaboraction (which is currently producing the play) already had the professional rights. Says Vanderwarker of their Mr. Marmalade, “This would have been our fourth or fifth Chicagoland premiere in a row. Ultimately, the saddest thing about this is that it just fosters an environment of comparison and competition. We should be developing our audiences together as a community, rather than splintering it.”
So given that the licensing companies don’t bother to inform nonprofessional theatres about competing productions and the information available through the League is sometimes incomplete, what can be done? Right now, the onus seems to fall upon those companies seeking nonprofessional rights to ask up front if anyone else in the region has obtained rights for a show – and hope that the licensing companies will give them a straight and timely answer. “It’s such a failing business model,” says Vanderwarker. “How can you run a theatre company devoted to new works if you can’t get exclusive rights?”