OU's Lost Flaming Company is doing two well-known, big-name productions this semester.
Members of the Lost Flamingo Company, the student theater troupe, were all prepared last year for their production of "Misery" by Stephen King. Rehearsals were just about finished. The time and location were booked. The Facebook event had been made.
But within a week of the premiere, the show was canceled because the group was unable to attain the rights to perform the play. Michelle Robinson, the current president of LFC, said the rights for "Misery" were taken down as a whole and the group hadn’t secured them before pursuing the show.
This year, she’s not letting that happen.
“We don’t want to be left in a rut,” said Robinson, a senior studying broadcast journalism. “I made sure to make sure we get the rights before anything happens.”
Surprisingly, acquiring rights to dramatic works can be as simple as the click of a mouse. Robinson said LFC often purchases rights from Theatrical Rights Worldwide, Dramatists Play Service Inc. and Samuel French Inc.
“The companies want people to perform (the work) because they want to make money, so they’re not out to make it difficult,” said Josh Antonuccio, a lecturer in the music production and recording industry program.
A form for the dramatic, or “grand,” rights license is then filled out based on the parameters of how the work will be used, such as the number of performances, type of group putting on the show — amateur or professional — and size of the audience.
Elicia Gibson, a junior studying marketing, will play Wednesday Addams in the upcoming musical "The Addams Family" and said she appreciates the easy access to the better-known shows.
“It allows (small companies) to bring in the larger audiences to those larger shows instead of being limited to the off-chart shows no one knows about,” she said. “We can gain a bigger following as a theater company.”
For regular straight plays, one only needs to purchase the rights to the script. But in situations when music is a component of a play’s storyline or with a musical in general, the rights to the music must be purchased in addition to the rights required for the dramatic narrative.
For instance, "Rumors" requires “La Bamba” to be played, so LFC must pay for those rights as well. Robinson said the music rights come from the same company from which they purchased the dramatic rights.
Thus, musicals, by their very nature, cost more.
“With musicals, it’s always exponentially expensive,” Robinson said. “You have to pay for the performance rights, rights to the music and all the materials that come with it: scripts, the score, books for all the instruments.”
She said LFC paid roughly $1,900 to do four performances of "The Addams Family," essentially depleting the profits from the group’s annual production of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," which brought in about $3,000.
For comparison, the rights to "August: Osage County" cost $240 for two performances.
Gibson saw a performance of "The Addams Family" in Pittsburgh and said she is excited LFC is able to do its own production of the popular 2010 Broadway musical. "Addams Family" is one of the nine new musicals available from Theatrical Rights Worldwide.
“It’s nice to see a show like that, which has a national tour, and to be a small part of that,” she said. “I don’t know if we’d be able to do that if it didn’t have as easy an access to those shows.”
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